


We Can't Go Back (Or Can We)

by Shippershape



Series: Martinski Road Trip [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Living Together, Roommates, Slow Burn, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 00:47:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2329109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shippershape/pseuds/Shippershape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to The Days Are The Nightmares (read that first). Stiles and Lydia wake up in a room that is not their motel room. They both look different, older, and they realize what felt like one night passing to them was actually years. Can they figure out what happened to to them? And more importantly, can they find their way back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good Morning

Stiles woke to the smell of lavender. His face was pressed into Lydia’s neck, her hair ticking his lips. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know that it was already light out, his own hair was damp with sweat. As he savored the feeling of Lydia wrapped tightly in his arms, he marveled at the fact that she could still smell so good. It had been two days since she’d showered, he was hoping he could convince her to use the motel’s questionable shower before they left, but she still smelled amazing. Actually, he thought, they both smelled pretty clean. So did the bed, even though as they’d fallen asleep the night before the smell of old sweat had nearly overpowered him. Confused, Stiles opened his eyes, only to slam them shut as the full light of day burned into his retinas. _What the hell?_

The motel room only had one window, and it wasn’t exactly big. There was no way that tiny window could let in this much light. Bracing himself for the pain, Stiles forced his eyes open once more, then shot straight up in bed. Discomfort forgotten, he stared around the room with wide eyes. Instead of the dreary beige of the hotel room, the walls were painted a cool blue. Pictures and books littered the walls and desk sitting in the corner. There was something disturbingly familiar about the style, but he was certain he’d never seen this room before. His eyes fell on the picture closest to the bed, and upon recognizing the people in it he gave a yelp of surprise and promptly tumbled out of bed.

As he sat on the floor, blinking dazedly, he heard the rustling of sheets and realized Lydia was waking up. He reigned his focus back in just in time to see her head pop over the side of the bed. Her eyes were wide, wild. Stiles was sure he looked the same.

“Stiles… wh-” He shushed her. She didn’t even have the composure to look annoyed. His eyes swept over her face, taking in the subtle differences. Her cheekbones seemed higher almost, sharper. Her lips, always full, stood out more than he was used to on her thinned out face. Her hair, which had fallen in around her face, was long enough to tickle Stiles where he sat on the floor. She looked different. Older. Heart pounding, Stiles shoved himself roughly to his feet. He glanced down at his hands, noting the tiny changes. That scar he’d gotten the night Scott had tried to light himself on fire was faded, almost gone. It had still been pink and shiny the night before. Stiles scanned the room for a mirror. Spotting one above the desk (vanity?) he nearly launched himself at it. He poured over every inch of reflection, noting the different freckle patterns, the angular line of his chin and jaw, the way his hair was longer than he had ever kept it.

“This is impossible.” He muttered, backing away from the mirror. He was a little startled at the vehemence in his own voice. “This isn’t-” He turned back to the bed, and saw Lydia kneeling in the sheets, her hands fisted in the duvet. She looked terrified. Stiles tried to ignore the fact that she didn’t look like his Lydia, she looked like someone else, and stepped tentatively toward her. _This isn’t real_. He told himself. It couldn’t be. Still, he found himself edging closer to Lydia. The fear in her eyes was beginning to cause him physical pain.

“Lydia?” He asked. His voice, now that his ears were no longer ringing with the sound of his own thunderous heartbeat, sounded deeper.

“Stiles.” So did hers. No deep so much as… fuller. The rasp was still there, and she sounded like herself, but not. Stiles stood nervously beside the bed. Part of him wanted to hold her, to embrace what was clearly a dream and pull her into his arms and savor it until he woke up. The other part felt awkward, like he was looking at a stranger.

“This is a dream.” He said. Because it was. She stared at him for a moment, those lips that he had always loved half pursed as though she was about to say something. Then she did.

“No.” She murmured. It was his turn to stare. “Stiles, look at your hands.” Suddenly remembering what he had taught her, he looked back down at his hands. Five fingers stared back at him. The room started to spin, but he took a deep breath, shutting his eyes and shutting out the view that was causing his heart to kick up again. When he opened them Lydia stood in front of him. Instinctively, he opened his arms, and Lydia stepped into them. As he held her like that, one hand on the back of her head, he knew. He had held her like this before, and it felt exactly as it did then, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was as real as that had been.

They’d woken up in the future. And Stiles had no idea how they were going to get back.

 

 

 


	2. A Crossbow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I hope you guys like the direction I'm taking this series. If you do, please review and share, I love to get feedback on my work.

It suddenly occurred to Stiles that there were a few possibilities here. They could both have been aged somehow overnight, the opposite of whatever had happened to Derek. Maybe it was some weird side effect to handling those fangs.

On the other hand, potentially, they could be in the future. He had tried to suppress that thought the second it had entered his head because really, that was ridiculous. They had seen a lot of things in the past few years, but time travel? He was also beginning to realize that if by some bizarre miracle they actually had shot forward into the future, he might be the only one with a memory of it. What if this actually wasn’t his Lydia? What if this girl in his arms was someone he hadn’t even met yet? He pulled back.

               She looked upset. Her eyes were huge and black, and Stiles remembered how she’d known exactly what he was thinking as tried to pass this off as a dream. Deciding to throw caution to the wind in favor of getting everything out in the open, Stiles just asked.

               “Lydia.” There was that voice again. His voice. His words as he thought them, in a few tones lower than he was used to. “What’s the last thing you remember?” She seemed to be thinking, and as she did so, Stiles realized all she was wearing was a green nightie. It was short, very short, and it dipped at her chest in a way that made it impossible not to notice that those had certainly not been that big the last time he saw her. He averted his eyes. Either Lydia was a late bloomer, or she’d had some work done. Finally she spoke.

               “The motel. We were going to sleep, waiting for it to be light out…” She looked up at him. Her eyes slid slowly across his face, then down his body. He would have made a joke about her checking him out if he hadn’t been doing the same thing to her a few seconds ago. If her eyes had been big before, they now seemed to take over her face. Stiles wondered which of them had changed more. At least this confirmed that whatever had happened, he wasn’t in it alone. Lydia let out a noise that could only be described as pure shock, and Stiles followed her gaze to the picture he had been looking at earlier. Right. He had forgotten about that.

               Striding over to the picture, Stiles pulled it off the wall and stared at it. A miniature version of himself stared back. In the picture his arm was slung easily across Lydia’s shoulders, a wide grin on his face as she pressed a kiss to his cheek. Her red hair was caught in the wind, thrown back against blue sky. They looked closer to high school age Stiles and Lydia than they were now, but he could see the thinning of Lydia’s face, and the shadow across his jaw that said quite a bit of time had passed for them. He looked up at Lydia, the real Lydia, who was standing there in her nightie, hands balled into tiny fists. He made his way over to her, and pulled her back onto the bed. He grabbed the duvet and wrapped it around her, then handed her the picture. She stared at it the same way he had, disbelieving, then dropped it onto the bed beside her.

“I don’t understand.” She whispered. Stiles frowned.

“Yes, you do.” He said it gently, but firmly. He needed her, now maybe more than ever. Both of them had to pull it together. She stared up at him, and suddenly the fear was gone, replaced by exhaustion. She sagged into herself, leaning against him. His arm slid around her shoulders, and it was almost achingly familiar. The second he’d seen that picture he’d known. It had taken having Lydia in his arms to admit it to himself, but the look in his eyes in that picture was the same look he always had when she touched him. A little bit of wonder.

“What the hell happened?” Lydia’s voice was a bit muffled as she was speaking into his t-shirt, but Stiles heard her. He shrugged, knowing Lydia could feel it.

“I have no idea.” She sat up with a sigh. Hopping to her feet, she cased the room. Her eyes swept over every picture, every inch of wall. As she leaned forward to study a portrait of them, her nightgown rode up and Stiles noticed something on the back of her thigh. He leaned over, brushing his fingers across it, and Lydia gave a startled yelp.

“Stiles, what are you doing?” As he glanced up at her, Stiles realized how it looked, his hand halfway up her dress. He jerked backwards.

“You have a tattoo.” He offered, blushing. She narrowed her eyes.

“What is it?” She asked, still glaring at him suspiciously. Stiles smiled sadly at her.

“It’s a crossbow.” Lydia stared at him for a moment, the glare slipping off her face. Grief replaced it, drawing lines across her forehead, tugging at the corners of her lips. She shook it off.

“Oh.”

“Lydia.” Stiles said softly. She shook her head.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Stiles.” He frowned.

“No, not that. We have to talk about this.” Stiles gestured around the room. It had come to him, the reason why the room seemed so familiar. It was a mash of styles, his and hers. The blue was something he would have chosen, and the way the books were organized, or rather their lack of any visible organization system, was reminiscent of his bedroom back at his dad’s house. The pictures and the finer points of décor, white trim everywhere, lush throw pillows, that was Lydia. This room was theirs. Lydia stayed where she was, folding her arms across her chest.

“Okay. So. We’re… in the future.” They’d both been thinking it, but the moment the words left her mouth Stiles had to stifle a giggle. It was just so ridiculous. He suppressed it, though, because she was glaring again.

“Yeah. We’re, um, in the future. How far, do you think?” Stiles asked. She didn’t answer him. “Like, when are we, exactly?”

“Oh.” Apparently this hadn’t occurred to Lydia. She frowned, pacing between the photos, trying to find something that would give her a clue. Stiles looked around, and spotted a phone charging on the bedside table. He picked it up, searching for a power button. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t one. It was just a thin piece of metal and glass. He turned around and thrust it at Lydia. She took it, looking confused.

“Try and turn that on.” She flipped it over a few times, apparently as stumped as he was.

“What is it?” She asked.

“It’s a phone.” He said, as if it were obvious.

“How do you know?” She persisted, holding it up to her eye for a better look. Stiles sighed in frustration.

“What do you mean how do I know? What else would it be?” He was starting to get annoyed, not at Lydia so much as their situation. For some reason he had this feeling that if they could just figure out what day it was they would be able to figure out where to go from there. Lydia let out a little shriek as the phone chimed and vibrated in her hand. A cool female voice came from it, wishing them both a good morning. Lydia thrust it back at Stiles, looking unnerved. He took it, and the screen flashed with a logo, at least that was familiar, before lighting up with another picture of Lydia and Stiles. In this one neither was looking at the camera. They were locked together in which was clearly a passionate kiss, eyes closed, his hand tangled in her hair. He ignored the twinge of melancholy in his stomach. Whatever twisted alternate future they had been sent to, it wasn’t exactly realistic. His eye was drawn away from the picture as the date and time flashed in the corner of the screen.

His breath left him all at once, and he staggered backward, knees buckling as the back of his legs his the bed. He had suspected that they were way, way ahead of their time. The changes in her face, in his face, they had told him that more than a few days had passed. But seeing it like that, laid out on the screen, it was staggering. Lydia was by his side in a second, her hand on his back.

“Stiles?” He tried to tell her, but his mouth was dry, unbearably so, and nothing came out. Instead, he shoved the phone at her. He didn’t look up, didn’t see her reaction as she gazed wistfully down at the picture, but he heard the sharp intake of breath as she saw the date.

“Five years?!” She gaped at the numbers in front of her. “Stiles.” Her hands were like claws on his arm, fingers digging painfully into his skin.

“I know.” He wheezed. He finally forced himself to look up at her. The date on the screen, December 12th 2020, seemed burned on the back of his eyelids. He felt the fluttering of a panic attack rising in his stomach, and pressed his palm against his chest, trying to slow the frantic beating of his heart.

“Okay.” Lydia muttered. “Alright, so it’s 2020.” Stiles realized she was trying to work through it, to distract him with the puzzle. He appreciated more than he could ever say. “We’re… we would be twenty-four. Both of us.” Stiles nodded. They both had spring birthdays so that would make sense. It would also explain why they looked like they were so much older. “And we’re a couple.” Stiles bit the inside of his cheek. It was pretty obvious that was true. This was _their_ bedroom. There were photos of them everywhere. The wallpaper on his phone was of the kissing. It was preposterous, but it was true.

“Yeah.” He said, the dry tone of his voice not lost on her. She gave him a questioning look but let it slide. “So we’re twenty-four, living together, and you have a tattoo.” That was all the information they had, really, and laid out like that it didn’t seem like much. Lydia stood up and held out her hand. Stiles frowned at it.

“If we want to find out what’s going on, we’re going to have to go out there.” She nodded toward the door. Stiles grudgingly took her hand and they walked to the door together. She gave him one last look, something meant to be reassuring, but he could feel her hand shaking in his and it didn’t go far to calming to his own fears. “Ready?” She asked. He didn’t answer. Instead, he just reached for the doorknob, gripped it and swung open the door. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, SO. I'm continuing this story after a very long hiatus. But I've recently gotten back on the Stydia train and just really wanted to keep going with it. There are a few changes, and I just want to point them out at the beginning of the chapter. One is that since the last update on this story, I've taken to writing most of my fics in the present tense, and it was too difficult to get the flow right when I tried to revert to writing in past tense. So starting with this chapter, all updates will be in present tense. I've also changed the date where they end up forward by a year to make up for the year that passed since I started this fic (I'm very bad, and I'm very sorry).
> 
> Anyways. I plan to raise this fic from the ashes, and I'm posting this chapters as a bit of a survey to see if anyone is still reading it. If so, I will continue to update, as I have a pretty good idea what I'm going to do with the story. If you read it, and if you like it, please just leave a review so that I know to keep going. 
> 
> Thanks everyone :)

 

It isn’t what he expected. Stiles isn’t sure what that was, exactly, but maybe robots, or witches, or something equally terrifying, like the void. But it’s just an apartment. It matches the bedroom, in it’s mixture of Stiles’ quirk and Lydia’s class, and isn’t inherently threatening in any way.

He steps forward, pulling Lydia behind him, her fingers still twined firmly with his. There’s a soft click, and then light floods the apartment. He glancedsbehind him to see Lydia’s fingers on a switch on the wall. They both look around, quiet, taking it in.

“It’s so…”

“Normal?” He finishes, eyes flitting over a grey sofa and a flat screen TV, and a wall of books that spans the entire length of the place.

“I was going to say _us_.”

Her voice is soft, like she hadn’t meant to say it. He squeezes her hand. She must see it too, the things that are hers, and the things that are his. It’s obvious to him. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, though, at least not that he can see. Nothing other than them. His eyes fall on the kitchen table, sporting a bowl full of nothing but bananas.

“Maybe we should just sit down and see what we remember. Find a place to start.” He suggests. She’s trembling beside him, and he thinks it probably has nothing to do with being cold.  She nods, and he steers her toward the table. Stiles flips through the cupboards in the kitchen, coming up with a bag of fancy looking coffee. There’s a lot of French on the label, future-Lydia must be in charge of that, but it will get the job done. So he pours it, along with some water, into the coffee maker on the counter, and pokes at the buttons on the front until a light comes on. He scans the rest of the kitchen then pulls open a drawer, unsurprised to find the notepad and pens he wants on the first try. Everything is set up exactly the way he would have done it. It makes perfect sense. There’s even a ball of red string sitting in the drawer next to the coloured markers.

He grabs what he needs, then heads back to the table. Lydia is chewing on her thumbnail, and Stiles reaches out to gently pull it away.

“Are you okay?”

It’s a stupid question, because he doesn’t expect the answer to be anything other than _no_ , but he needs her to keep it together. He needs her.

She gazes up at him, hazel eyes rimmed with gold, almost reminiscent of the way Scott’s used to be. They seem to look through him.

“It’s worse here. The feeling that you…” She pauses. “It’s worse here.”

Stiles falls silent as he processes that, and she slides her hand across the table, grabbing his.

“The ‘I’m going to die’ feeling?” He asks, eventually, just to clarify. His mouth goes dry, though he’s not really sure why it even matters, not when they’re already so in over their heads. But it’s hardly a good omen.

She nods.

“I just thought you should know.” But she looks afraid. And he realizes she isn’t holding his hand to comfort _him_.

“Hey.” He slides his chair around the table to sit next to her. “We’re going to figure this out, okay?” One of his hands finds her cheek, the motion familiar, like he’s done it a million times. It occurs to him, in the back of his mind, that maybe here, in this body, he has.

She looks like she wanted to argue, or maybe cry, but her eyes fall on the notepad on the table.

“That girl. This has to have something to do with either her or the fangs. Or maybe both?” She mutters, switching into problem solving mode. Stiles suspects it’s the only way she can cope. But he grabs the pen and starts scribbling anyways.

“Okay. Sure. Do you think the date has any significance? Like why did we end up now?” He wonders, looking back up at her. She shrugs.

“Maybe something’s going to happen. Or maybe there’s something we’re supposed to do?”

He hands her the pen, getting up to pour them some coffee. His mind is fuzzy, probably least of all with sleep, but it smelled good and familiar and his mouth was still dry. When he brings the mugs back to the table, Lydia has already filled most of the page with text and arrows.

“What do you have?” He asks, setting a mug down in front of her. She puts the pen down and sips at the coffee, sighing. It’s exactly the way she took it five years ago, and Stiles wonders if that could have changed. What if twenty-four year old Lydia prefers two sugars to one?

“It keeps coming back to that woman from the motel. She was obviously connected to the fangs, it sounded like maybe they belonged to a relative or something.” She rubs her eyes distractedly.

It’s what Stiles has been thinking as well. But he isn’t sure where that gets them.

“And there’s something else.”

The tone of Lydia’s voice prompts Stiles to look up. She’s biting her lip, which is distracting in it’s own right, but that worried look in her eyes seems to have intensified.

“What?” He asks, a little nervous.

“She said…well she said something about you, right?”

He frowns, trying to remember. It’s a bit of a blur now, between the weirdness of the kiss and the panic of losing his Jeep.

“Uh…” He’s coming up blank.

“She said you have the sight? Or something like that. She said something about you being able to see the Spirit Gate, like because you’re human you shouldn’t have been able to.” She points to a spot on the page where her loopy handwriting spells out _Spirit Gate_. He does remember now, the memory coming back to him in bits and pieces. She’d looked…concerned. Frightened even.

“She freaked out.” He mumbles. “It was like the kiss was a test, and…”

“You failed?” Lydia asks, lips twitching. He scowls.

“I’ll have you know I have gotten no complaints, except for that one time, but that’s because Malia is kind of aggressive, and the biting thing got kind of out of control, and-”

Lydia holds up a hand, making a face.

“Don’t need to know, Stiles.” He half expects her to smile again, make fun of him, but she doesn’t. Her face stays impassive.

“I’m just saying.” He sighs. “She was babbling about me having this _sight,_ right, and she was definitely surprised by something about the, uh…”

“Kiss.” Lydia nods. “Exactly. Like she was feeling you out, and she found something she wasn’t bargaining for. Something in you.”

Stiles raises an eyebrow.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

This time she does laugh, a quick snicker that she doesn’t even try to repress. It almost knocks him off his feet, the relief of seeing a smile on her face again, her dimples, no matter how temporary. They’ve both been through enough, both wake up drenched in sweat after the nightmares that aren’t really nightmares. He suspects they both have a pretty serious case of PTSD, but that seems to come with the territory in Beacon Hills.

Still, he misses seeing her smile.

She sighs.

“What I’m saying, Stiles, is that maybe you had something to do with how we got here.”

He freezes.

“Wait, as in, you think I’m supernatural? Some kind of time traveler?” It probably shouldn’t sound so ridiculous to him, considering they’re sitting in the apartment of their twenty-four year old selves, and she’s frowning at him with a face that is slightly different than the one he’s used to, and he can actually feel the stubble coming in on his jaw which is something he’s never had to worry about before. But he’s awkward and clumsy and he bleeds and doesn’t heal and it’s always felt like there was no one quite as _human_ as plain old Stiles. So it sounds _ridiculous_. “Like Doctor Who?”

She rolls her eyes at the reference.

“I’m not saying you’re an alien. I’m just saying…maybe we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that you’re the reason we’re here.”

It almost sounds like an accusation, even though he knows she doesn’t mean it as one.

“Okay.” He says, though it’s not. If he’s the one who brought them here, he has no idea how to get them back. And he’s not sure he can live with the weight of that on his shoulders, not with Lydia sitting across from him looking so heartbreakingly forlorn that he just wants to pull her into his arms and never let go.

He watches her glance down at the list, scratching out a few things and adding some annotations. He thinks he’s glad she’s here with him, and feels immediately guilty for doing so. He should wish she was back where she was supposed to be, and that he’d never dragged her into this mess. And he does, for the most part. But every time his heart takes off racing, threatening one of the panic attacks he’s so familiar with, all it takes is a glance at her, the way her hair falls over her bare shoulder, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and he feels a little more like they might figure this out after all.

A look at the clock on the wall tells him it’s just after eight, and something occurs to him.

“Should we…do we leave the apartment?”

She blinks at him.

“Like are we hiding out in here? Or should we see what’s out there?” Opening the bedroom door was one thing. There’s an entire world out there that’s not theirs. The idea terrifies him, but the detective in him can’t help but be curious.

“I…we’ll have to leave.” She says, frowning. “At some point.  We’ll only get so far in here. We don’t have that much to go on.”

They both stare at the notepad in front of them, barely a page’s worth of words and names to start with. There’s a possibility, that he’s aware of, that they won’t ever get back. That they’ll be stuck here, five years of their lives missing, and that he’ll die, leaving Lydia alone in a world she knows nothing about.

He’s pulled from his thoughts by a noise, music coming from the bedroom. He looks at Lydia, alarmed, but she just stares through the doorway warily.

It sounds vaguely like a band he likes, though he’s never heard the song before. He gets up, walking nervously toward the sound, and sees the phone they discarded earlier lighting up on the bed.

He picks it up, gingerly, and sees Scott’s name flashing across the screen. Without a second though, he taps the green _answer_ icon, and holds it to his ear.

“Hello?”  He’s suddenly aware of exactly how much deeper his voice has gotten, and almost drops the phone when Scott’s voice comes through.

“Stiles?”

It sounds like him, but not. The same way Lydia does, the same way he does.

“Scott. Hey.” He manages. “What’s up?”

Stiles could just tell Scott, could open his mouth and let the story fall out, something about the woman from the motel, and magical fangs, and _oh by the way apparently I might be supernatural and have accidentally propelled myself and Lydia five years into the future_.

But he doesn’t. That’s not something you blurt out over the phone. And this Scott sounds just different enough from _his_ Scott that Stiles decides to hold his tongue.

“We’re running kind of late. I know we were supposed to meet at nine, but you know Kira.”

Yes, Stiles thinks, he does. Or he used to. He probably doesn’t know this Kira at all.

“No worries.” He forces the words out, his tongue like sandpaper. “You want to push it back?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind. Nine-thirty okay?”

Stiles swallows.

“Sure. Hey, where are we meeting again?” He tries to be cavalier. “Lyds and I, we couldn’t remember…”

It’s a risk, he knows that. For all he knows they could be going to a wedding or something. But if Scott finds the question strange, Stiles can’t tell over the phone.

“Four Barrel, right? The one on Valencia?”

It doesn’t sound familiar. For the first time, it occurs to Stiles that they might not be in Beacon Hills.

“Yeah, right.” He forces a laugh. “Okay, see you there.”

When he hangs up, he notices Lydia sitting on the end of the bed. She’s obviously been listening, and her head is tilted in curiosity.

“So, we’re going out.” She deduces. He nods. The whole thing feels even more surreal after talking to Scott. His eyes fall on the curtains hanging on the far wall. He strides towards them, pulling them open a little harder than necessary. He has to blink against the bright morning light, and then he sees it, in all it’s International Orange glory.

“Lydia.” He says hoarsely. “We’re in San Francisco.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here's the next chapter! I said I'd keep it going if I got a little feedback, so as long as I know people are reading this story I'll continue. I love comments, and they let me know people are still interested, so if you like the chapter or have any thoughts, please leave one!

It could be worse. They could be in China, or Africa, or Canada maybe, but they’re not. They’re in San Francisco. At least they’re still in California.

Stiles voices that out loud, and Lydia turns to him from where she’s standing at the window.

“At least we’re still in California.” She agrees, though her eyes are clouded over in thought. “You know, five years into the future.”

He sighs.

“It’s eight-thirty. We should start getting ready. I’m going to have to look up where this place is, and-” His mouth falls open in annoyance. “And do we even have a _car_?”

Lydia pads out of the room, returning a couple minutes later with two key rings.

“It looks like we have two.” She says, dropping one of the rings into his hand. The one he’s holding has a silver S dangling from it, along with what appear to be house keys and a tiny black fob. He frowns at it, turning it over to find a Chevy logo embossed in the back.

“These do _not_ look like the keys to my Jeep.” He grumbles, closing his fist around them. Lydia is inspecting her own set, and looks up, unsympathetic.

“So what you’re saying is that you now have a vehicle that runs.” She mutters, raising an eyebrow. He sputters.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you do not-”

“Insult the Jeep.” She finishes for him, rolling her eyes. “I know. I’m going to go take a shower.” She pokes her head into the other doorway out of the bedroom, and disappears through it. A minute or so later, Stiles hears the sound of running water.

He flops down onto the bed with a sigh, fingering the key ring in his hand. Is this supposed to be real? Is this really the future as it unfolds for them? It seems like a sick joke, the kind where you know all along that it’s too good to be true. But here they are. His eyes fall on the picture of them sitting on the nightstand, and stills for a moment. They just look so…natural, like that, her lips pressed against his cheek, his smile easy and relaxed, like it’s something they do all the time. Must be nice, he thinks. If only it were real.

When Lydia emerges from the shower, she stalks over to the closet, opening it with trepidation. What she finds there apparently pleases her, because she flicks through the hangars with only a mild air of disapproval. He walks past her to the bathroom, and she turns around, frowning at him.

“I don’t know what to wear.” She tells him. He stares.

“Lydia.” He says, slightly stupefied. “I really think we might have bigger problems.” The glare he receives in response has him back pedalling, so he pulls something forest green from the rack in front of him. It’s a sweater, light and gauzy, and he holds it out to her. “Wear this.” He mutters, and she takes it with surprise. “You look good in green.”

He’s about to turn back for the bathroom when she catches his chin in her hand. It feels so normal that he almost doesn’t realize what she’s doing for a moment. And then his eyes go wide, and she lets go.

“Sorry.” She mutters, and he suspects she’s feeling it too, that sensation of alien intimacy, one that seems second nature but doesn’t really belong to them. “It’s just,” she points to his jaw. “You need to shave.”

That’s new for him, he wasn’t exactly the king of facial hair when they were seniors in high school, but they aren’t anymore. And now he’s a person that needs to shave in the morning. The look on Lydia’s face makes him wonder if she finds that as strange as he does. After all, he’s not the one with a tattoo that appeared literally overnight.

He runs his hand over the scruff on his face as he heads for the shower. The whole bathroom smells like her, and it seems incredible to him that so much has changed and she must still use the same shampoo, or soap, or whatever it is that she’s smelled like since high school. He showers, thankful for the plain bar of Irish Spring that is obviously his own contribution to the veritable apothecary in their bathroom. The label on his shampoo has the word _Sandalwood_ on it, and he suspects it was not one he picked himself.

He manages to shave without incident, both impressed and unnerved at that particular display of muscle memory. It occurs to him, as he rinses the remaining shaving cream from his face, that he didn’t bring a change of clothes into the bathroom. Lydia had emerged wearing some kind of kimono-robe thing, but he obviously doesn’t have one of those. So he slings his towel across his hips, locker-room style, and walks back into the bedroom. Lydia is sitting at the vanity, drying her hair. He takes that in, stomach tightening. It’s the little things, he notices, that feel the most intimate. Her shampoo in his shower, watching her dry her hair while he gets dressed. Seeing her clothes mixed in with his as he digs around the closet for a pair of jeans. It’s so domestic it almost hurts him. He was getting over her before this. He had Malia, and they were so constantly immersed in pack emergencies, many of which were life and death, that he’d almost forgotten to be painfully and unrequitedly in love with Lydia.

And he has a feeling that when they get out of this, _if_ they get out of this, his feelings for her are going to be more out of control than ever.

Sighing, he throws a pair of Levis over his shoulder and begins rooting around for a shirt that isn’t an Oxford.

“What the hell do I do?” He wonders vaguely, disturbed at the amount of nice slacks and suits he finds as he flicks through the overstuffed closet.

It’s a good question, though. If by some wild stretch of the imagination this actually turns out to be their real future, he can’t say he isn’t curious as to what he ended up doing. Although, this seems like far too formal a wardrobe for a detective.

“T-shirts are on the bottom right shelf.” Lydia tells him without looking up. He discovers that she’s right, and picks a plain black one from the assortment of band tees and pop culture graphics. She doesn’t seem to be looking, so he shimmies the boxers on under his towel and then proceeds to throw on the jeans and t-shirt. The shirt is a full size larger than the ones he wore in high school, and fits a little more snugly. Surprised, he pokes himself in the chest, and for the first time really notices how much his body has changed since waking up. His shoulders are broader, and there are actually pecs under his shirt and-are those abs? He tries to be discrete when he lifts up his shirt a little, and sure enough they’re there. Nothing like the aggressive 8 packs he’s used to seeing on their supernatural cohorts, but still. Abs.

“What are you doing?”

He looks up to see Lydia staring at him, and lets the shirt fall back into place.

“Just…taking stock.” He says casually, though he can feel his ears flaming red. He half expects her to laugh at him, but she just looks thoughtful.

“This is so…” She trails off, looking for the right word.

“Surreal?” He offers. She nods. Half her hair is clipped up in some type of claw contraption, and her face is bare. It’s unfair, he thinks, that she’s so beautiful and intelligent at the same time. At the very least, she could be awkward and clumsy like him. But no, she took ballet from ages 4 through 13, so. She’s gazelle-like. She could wear a parka and a fanny pack to coffee, and she’d still be the most stunning person in the room.

God, he’s screwed. He’s never going to get over her this time.

“Finish your-” He gestures at her head. “We have to meet Scott in twenty minutes and I still don’t know where we’re going.” She complies, with a huff, and Stiles locates a laptop in their living room. There’s a Beacon Hills Lacrosse sticker on the top of it, so he assumes it’s his and cracks the password on the third try. _Ariel_. He’s so predictable he’s almost embarrassed. At least this time it came in handy. He remembers Peter’s voice, over his shoulder.

_His username is Allison?_

_His password is_ also _Allison?_

His chest constricts a little, the way it always does when he thinks about her. God, some things are just so….sad. Senseless. He sounds like a MADD spokesperson, even in his head, but he can’t help it. Some people just aren’t meant to die young.

He pulls up google maps.

The coffee place is barely a five minute drive from the apartment, so Stiles figures that leaves them fifteen minutes to find their cars.

Lydia comes waltzing out of the bedroom a few minutes later, wearing a grey skirt and the sweater he chose. Her lips are a couple shades darker than they’d been when he left her.

“Ready?” He asks. She shrugs.

They leave the apartment and are faced with their first challenge. The parkade.

“We could just walk around pushing the button.” Lydia suggests, gesturing at the key fob in his hand. He sighs.

“Yeah, because that wouldn’t look suspicious at all.” He mutters. She flicks him an annoyed look.

“Alright. Well, you’re the detective. Detect.” Her voice has changed from weary to irritated already. They’re off to a great start. Stiles holds the keys up in front of him.

“We’re looking for a Chevy, obviously, and I’m guessing this is my car so it’s probably grey or blue.” The keys are obviously fairly new, still glinting in the early morning light that filters through the rafters. “I’d say last years model, but that doesn’t really help us since we don’t know what those look like.”

“Do you think it’s a truck?” Lydia wonders, scanning the parkade. Truck sounds vaguely like Stiles, but it is San Francisco, so-

“No.” He decides. “Probably not.”

In the end, they do walk around hitting the unlock button. Stiles ignores Lydia’s superior smile when they hear chirping a couple rows over. But when they finally find the vehicle making the noise, they just stare.

“Stiles.” Lydia finally says. “What is _that_?”

They both look the grey car over in suspicion.

“I think,” he says slowly, hitting the button one more time just to make sure they have the right car. “-that it’s a Camaro.”

He pulls open the passenger door, because it’s weird, sure, but they’re already late. Lydia slides in warily. He gets it started, pleased when he notices the standard transmission, and hands the cellphone he’d remembered to bring with them over to Lydia.

“Directions.” He tells her. They pull out of the parkade, and she talks him through the first couple turns, falling silent when they hit a red light.

“This is a nice car.” She observes, running her fingers along the leather seat. He hums an agreement. “I didn’t know you liked muscle cars.”

He laughs.

“It’s not like I can afford one.” He says with a sigh. “ _Could_ afford one.” He corrects. “I guess I can now.” The first car he remembers his dad having was a Camaro. The Sherriff had been obsessed with that thing, but then Stiles’ mom had gotten sick, and it had been the first thing to go when the medical bills began to pile up.

The light turns green.

“Right at the next light. You can park close to the corner, the café should be there.” Lydia says, pulling him from his thoughts. He does as he’s told, and they make their way toward the café with a foreign sense of anxiety.

He thinks he’s hiding it relatively well, and sticks his hands in his pockets, just in case. Scott has been his constant. He was there when Stiles’ mom got sick, and when she passed away. Stiles spent countless nights in the McCall home when his father was working too late, or simply forgot to pick Stiles up from school during a particularly involved case. Scott was Stiles’ brother, in every way except for blood. And now he’s going to be a stranger.

Feeling a tug on his arm, Stiles looks down. Lydia has linked her arm through his, pressing her face against his bicep as they walk through the door.

 _Someone who can bring you back_.

He remembers Deaton’s words, and feels the significance of them for the first time. Lydia is his anchor now. And even before they fell into this wormhole-future universe-time shift something, she’d been around in a way he’s begun to count on. He feels a little less nervous.

Scott is sitting by the window, and waves them over when he spots them. Half his face is covered by an incredible beard, and paired with a red gingham flannel, he looks like a slightly darker version of the Brawny paper towel guy. Lydia presses her face a little harder into Stiles’ arm to stifle the laughter. But the smile on Scott’s face is so bright, and so familiar, that the knot in Stiles’ stomach loosens exponentially.

“Hey!” Scott greets them, as they pull up chairs to the tiny table.

“Hey.” Stiles says with a nod, and Lydia does the same. “Where’s Kira?”

Scott points to the street, where Stiles sees the Kitsune deep in conversation with her cellphone.

“Work.” Scott says, by way of explanation. Stiles makes a knowing face, though he’s never felt less knowledgable about anything. A pretty waitress with a brown apron interrupts Stiles deciding how to proceed by setting four cups of coffee down in front of them. There seems to be a swan drawn on the top of whatever frothy beverage Scott has ordered him, and Stiles frowns down at it.

“Thanks.” Lydia says, when she realizes Stiles is too distracted to respond. The girl smiles, and shuffles off. “Mmm.”  Lydia makes a show of lifting the drink to her mouth, maybe to give him time to collect himself, but that just distracts him in a new way.

“So, have you guys decided what to get them? Me and Kira were thinking a really good knife set. You know Malia, she’s not exactly the salad bowl type.” Scott muses, breaking the silence. Stiles stares at him.

“Um, we haven’t decided yet.” Lydia says, once again covering for him. He really needs to pull it together.

“Yeah.” He says, voice hoarse. It sounds like Scott is saying-

“God,” Lydia smiles, shooting him a glance. “Malia getting married. I didn’t think she had it in her to settle down.”

So clearly Stiles is not the only one drawing that conclusion. But there’s a familiar tone of disdain in Lydia’s voice, which he finds interesting. Scott laughs.

“Right? I dunno, her and Theo seem pretty well matched though.” He shrugs. Stiles has to physically prevent his jaw from dropping onto the table. Lydia’s eyes pop a little, but she hides it by looking out the window.

“Oh.” She says distractedly. “I think Kira’s coming in.”

Sure enough, the petite Asian girl joins them a minute later, sighing.

“Guys, I’m so sorry.” She says, regret on her face. She hasn’t sat down, Stiles notices, and soon the reason for that becomes clear. “Scott, I’ve been called in, there’s some kind of emergency with the power lines downtown, and apparently I’m the only one on call who isn’t terrified to climb up there, so-”

“I’ll drive you.” Scott says, jumping out of his seat and grabbing his jacket. Some things never change, and Stiles thinks it’s nice to see. The pair shoot him and Lydia an apologetic glance, and Scott throws a couple bills on the table. Stiles almost objects, and then realizes that he never even thought to look for a wallet at the apartment. Which also means no drivers license, but it’s a little late for that.

“Scott.” Stiles gets to his feet just as his friend turns to go, suddenly panicked. “Do you think-”

Scott waits, patiently, while Kira chews her lip impatiently beside him.

“Do you think you could come by later?” Stiles finally manages. “I need to talk to you.”

If Scott is surprised by the urgency in his voice, he doesn’t show it.

“Sure, man.” He nods. “I’ll text you later, but I can swing by after dinner.” And then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a plastic grocery bag. He presses it into Stiles’ hand with a glint in his eye.

“What’s-”

But Kira is already pulling Scott out the door. He mouths _don’t open that here_ to Stiles, and then disappears onto the street.

Beside him, Lydia stands up.

“What did he give you?” She wants to know. He shrugs.

“Should we go?” There’s something about being outside the apartment that’s making him feel exposed. She grabs his hand, and they find their way back to the car. He doesn’t need directions this time, so she just sits in the passenger’s seat, silent.

When they round the corner to the parkade, she speaks.

“I’m sorry.” She says. He pulls the Camaro into the spot where they found it, and then turns to shoot her a quizzical look.

“For what?”

“About Malia.” She says, as though it should be obvious. “And Theo.”

He almost laughs.

“Oh.” He bobs his head, acknowledging her condolences. “Thanks.” He’d actually forgotten about that, until she brought it up. It was weirding him out, more than anything else, and he searches for the sting of disappointment among the emotions in his chest but comes up empty. That probably says something about the state of whatever relationship he and Malia had going on five years ago. Or yesterday, depending on how you look at it.

 

“So you’re going to tell Scott.” Lydia calls from the bedroom, as Stiles looks through their fridge for something to eat. He pulls out a box of cold pizza that looks safe, and sees her emerge, a pair of rectangular, tortoiseshell frames perches on her nose. He blinks.

“What are those?”

She frowns and lifts a hand to touch her face, then realizes he means the glasses.

“Oh.” She murmurs. “Apparently I have glasses now. I was wondering if the contacts in the bathroom were yours, but when we were out I realized I must need them now.” Her fingers trace the corner of the frames self-consciously.

“Right.” He says, trying to ignore the feeling that rises in his chest as she fiddles with them. He clears his throat. “Yeah. I’m going to tell Scott. I don’t really see how we can work this out without knowing what’s happened in the past five years. Either the day this happened the first time _didn’t_ happen, or…” He shrugs. “Maybe we just never told them?”

Lydia ponders that, sitting at the counter and pulling a slice of something thin crust topped with a mountain of veggies out of the box. She sniffs it delicately, then takes a bite.

After swallowing, she frowns at him.

“You seem okay.” She finally says, after studying him for a moment. He raises an eyebrow.

“Thanks?”

“I just mean,” she says, sounding a little like she wishes she hadn’t brought it up, “that I figured you would be more upset about the fact that your girlfriend is getting married. To someone you hate.”

“Would it be better if my girlfriend was marrying someone I like?” He wonders aloud. Lydia glares at him. He sighs. “I’m still not totally convinced this is even real. It’s hard to get upset over something you half suspect is a hallucination. Besides, technically Malia was my girlfriend five years ago, so.” He shrugs again.

“And for you, five years ago was last night. Coyotes mate for life.” She reminds him, and he can’t help but wonder why she’s drawing this conversation out.

“Yeah, well, I’m not a coyote.” He says, a little more sharply than he’d intended, and she leans back a little in her seat. He takes a piece of pizza just to occupy his hands. It’s not bad cold, even though there’s some kind of unidentifiable fancy mushroom on it, and they eat in silence for a little while.

“What about our jobs?” Lydia says after a while, breaking the silence. Stiles glances at her, confused.

“What _about_ our jobs?”

“Well, what if we’re supposed to be at them right now?” She wonders. He blinks.

“It’s Saturday.” He tells her. She scowls, and he feels like maybe he’s missing something.

“Some people work on Saturdays.” She says, like it’s obvious. And it probably should have been, she’s right.

He thinks about that for a moment.

“Do we care about that?” He asks. “Like, are we actually going to _go_ to our jobs? We don’t even know what they _are_. We won’t have the training, or any clue what we’re doing. I mean, that’s probably going to be pretty hard to fake. We won’t know our coworkers, or-”

“Alright.” Lydia holds up a hand, looking tired. “Clearly, you are opposed to going. But what if we’re stuck here for a while? What if we’re stuck here _forever_? We’re going to need jobs. And what if in five years we end up back at this moment and get fired for not showing up?”

She has some good points. But his own still stand.

“You think we’re going to be stuck here forever?” He asks, because he’s really hoping she doesn’t actually believe that. He’s still carrying the weight of the revelation that it might be his fault that they’re here in the first place. So.

“I don’t know what I think.” She replies.

“That’s a first.” He mumbles into the palm of his hand, and it’s not really productive, but he can’t help himself. It’s only just eleven, and it feels like he’s ready to go back to bed. Bed. That will prove interesting, but that’s a thought for later. He eyes the couch, sizing it up. It will probably do.

“So what did Scott give you?” Lydia asks, obviously ignoring his comment. When he looks puzzled, she nods at the plastic bag on the counter.

“Oh.” He loops his finger in the handle, dragging it toward them. “I don’t know, he said not to open it there, so.” He reaches in and pulls out a small black leather box. They both recognize it immediately as a jewelry box, if the sudden tension in the air is any indication. He flips open the lid, unsurprised to find a diamond solitaire glinting back at him. What does surprise him, is how painfully familiar the ring is. He just stares at it for a moment, his eyes all but melting the platinum band, and then he sets it on the counter suddenly, like the box has grown too hot to touch.

Lydia stares back and forth between the ring and him, and he tries to mask the emotion on his face, but obviously fails.

“It’s-” He has to clear his throat. “It’s an engagement ring.” He tells her, unnecessarily.

“I see that.” She says drily. Then she notices the way his eyes are unusually bright, the tightness in his face. “Stiles, it’s not that big a deal. I mean it is, obviously, but the girl it was meant for isn’t actually me or….not yet. I don’t know.” He files that _not yet_ away for later investigation through his shock. “And the boy who bought it, Stiles, you know it wasn’t you.”

He can’t take his eyes off it, though.

“He didn’t buy it.” He mutters, voice rough. “ _I_ didn’t buy it.” He corrects. He can feel her watching him curiously, but doesn’t look up. “That’s my mother’s ring, and that’s _exactly_ what I would have given you.”

Lydia exhales sharply.

“You know,” he adds belatedly, “if I were going to propose.”

When he finally glances back up at her, he can’t read the expression on her face.

“For the record,” she says quietly, “I love the ring.”

It’s a strange conversation to be having, because he and Lydia are _not_ getting engaged, not in this universe or any other. But still. It’s nice to know. So he dredges up a smile, and gets one in return.

“Should we retrace our steps?” He asks. “I know we kind of went over it this morning, but I’m thinking we should really write down everything that happened in the, like, 48 hours before we got here.”

He’s changing the subject. She lets him.

“Sure.” She says softly. So they sit down, and spend the next five hours bickering over what exactly was significant enough to include. Eventually their makeshift chronology reads about 7 pages of crossed out, annotated events, and Stiles decides he no longer remembers how his eyelids work let alone what kind of pants the woman in the parking lot was wearing.

He throws the pen down.

“She was wearing pants.” Lydia insists. He groans.

“I’m definitely not arguing that she wasn’t _wearing_ any.” He mutters. “I think I would have noticed that.”

Beside him, she huffs.

“I’m sure.”

“I just don’t remember what kind. And I honestly don’t think it matters. Unless she happened to be wearing scrolls around her legs with the words _A foolproof guide to escaping accidental time travel and arriving back at the exact moment you left with your Jeep miraculously where it was before you fell asleep_ on them _._ ”

Lydia sniffs irritably.

“You know, they say sarcasm is the-” But she’s interrupted by the chirping of Stiles’ cellphone. He snags it off the counter, confused when he sees a name that isn’t Scott’s on the screen.

“Huh.” He says, opening it.

“Scott?” Lydia asks. He shakes his head.

“Different McCall.” He mumbles, reading the text.

 _Can you tell Scott to call me?  He won’t pick up_.  

Then he sees the hyphen after Melissa’s last name. “Oh my GOD!” He chokes, eyes nearly popping out of his head.

“What?” Lydia jumps out of her seat. “Stiles, what?” She peers over his shoulder, and it takes her a moment, then- “Oh.”

“Oh?” He turns to her incredulous. “My dad _married Scott’s mom_ and all you have to say is _oh_?”

She shrugs.

“Honestly, out of everything we’ve seen so far, that’s probably the least surprising.”

He stares at her.

“What?” It’s her turn to sound incredulous. “You honestly never saw it coming? And you call yourself a detective.” She snorts, shaking her head.

“I just…” He stares at the phone. “I guess I never really thought about him getting remarried. He was always so bad at dating after my mom died, it seemed kind of unlikely.”

He feels a hand on his shoulder, and rests his head against it.

“You like Melissa, though.” Lydia says after a while. “It could be worse, right?”

He suddenly remembers that her parents, too, aren’t together. Although divorce due to the uncomfortable cliché of sleeping with your secretary isn’t quite the same as one spouse dying due to mental illness. But still.

“Yeah.” He nods. “Actually…it’s good. Great, probably. It’s just kind of a lot to wrap my head around.”

“You and Scott are actually brothers now.”

That’s a thought, and he can’t help the smile. As though summoned by thoughts of him, Scott’s name flashes across Stiles’ phone.

“Hello?” Stiles holds it up to his ear, trying not to think about the new label between them. It’s only new to him, anyways.

“Hey dude.” Scott’s voice crackles over the line. “I know I said after dinner, but I have some time now, you free?”

Stiles has to physically restrain himself from shouting in relief.

“Yeah.” He manages. “Now’s great, come on up.”

When he hangs up, Lydia is watching him, their list clutched in her hand.

“Scott?”

This time he nods.

As they wait for Scott to arrive, Stiles reflects on the role reversal of the days events. It isn’t often that Stiles is the one going to Scott for information, for advice. He used to think he had all the answers. But now…

The knock at the door startles him out of his musings, Lydia rising to answer it before he’s totally recovered. He watches her swing the door open, invite Scott in as if she’s done it a million times. As if she lives here. Scott catches sight of the ring box on the counters as he makes his way to living room, eyebrows furrowing.

“Hey.” He says to Stiles, glancing behind him to see if Lydia is in earshot. He must decide she isn’t, because he leans in. “Did you ask her already?” He wonders, confusion apparent on his face under that ridiculous beard.

“Uh,” Stiles says, as Lydia joins them on the couch. “No.”

Obviously, that only confuses his friend more.

“We need to tell you something that’s going to sound crazy.” Lydia says suddenly, from beside him. They’re sitting side by side on the loveseat, shoulders touching. Scott leans back in the La-Z boy, eyes flitting between them.

“Isn’t that your line?” He asks Stiles, who tries to force a smile. If it looks nearly as awkward as it feels, he’s half surprised Scott doesn’t recoil in discomfort.

“I just want you to remember,” Stiles adds, “that I believed you when you said you thought you were a werewolf.”

Scott rolls his eyes.

“Stiles, _you_ were the one who told _me_ you thought I was a werewolf.” He reminds them. Stiles pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Okay.” He concedes. “Yes, but I was right wasn’t I?”

Scott finally looks worried.

“Guys, what’s going on?”

“We _may_ have accidentally time travelled.” Stiles says. Scott blinks.

“I…” He blinks some more, opening and closing his mouth a few times. “I’m not really sure what that means.” He finally manages.

“What Stiles is trying to say,” Lydia interjects, shooting him that _you really are the WORST at this kind of thing_ look, “is that this morning we woke up here, in 2020, but last night when we went to bed it was 2015.”

That just prompts more blinking. After a while, Stiles wonders if he should offer Scott some eye drops or something.

“You time travelled.” Scott echoes eventually. They both nod. “So you’re 2015 Stiles and Lydia in 2020 Stiles and Lydia’s bodies.”

Stiles thinks Scott is taking this remarkably well. Although it’s hard to tell. Maybe he’s actually having an aneurysm.

“Yeah.” Stiles confirms. Lydia leans forward, looking a little concerned at the vein protruding from Scott’s forehead.

“Are you…alright?” She asks, biting her lip. Scott seems to think about it.

“Uh, yes.” Then something occurs to him. “Are you? That’s kind of…I mean that’s pretty weird. How are you not freaking out more?”

“Oh we did.” Stiles assures him. “This morning. But now we just…”

“We’re trying to focus on how to get back.” Lydia finishes for him.

Scott goes quiet again, thoughtful.

“2015.” He frowns. “So you’re…you’re in Senior year. In high school.” He says. The thought seems to unnerve him.

“The last thing we remember is going to get those Beithir fangs for Derek. After he got, like, aged down.”

Scott’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Yeah.” He says slowly. “Okay, I remember that. So how can I help?”

He looks expectantly at the pair in front of him. Stiles realizes Scott is as used to Stiles being the one with the plan as he is.

“I think,” Stiles glances at Lydia, “that we just need some information. We’re five years behind, so.” She nods.

“Right.” This seems to make sense to Scott. “So,” this older, hairier version of Stiles’ best friend leans forward. “What do you want to know?”


	5. Chapter 5

“We have to go.”

Stiles groans, pressing his face into his pillow. They’ve been talking about this nonstop for twenty four hours, and he just really wants to sleep.

“Lydia. Why? What good will it do?” He argues, voice slightly muffled.

“I don’t want to get fired-”

“Because showing up at work with no idea how to do your job is going to what, get you a promotion?”

He can’t see anything, eyes still smushed against the pillow, but he can feel her irritation regardless.

“Stiles.” Her voice isn’t angry, just heavy with exhaustion. He feels it too, that kind of intoxicating fatigue that comes with staying up much too long and trying to retain altogether too much information. Usually, for him, it’s due to studying.

“Yeah.”

“Can you look at me?”

He rolls over with a sigh. He’s not even totally sure how they ended up in bed. His memories are beginning to blur together, but he remembers offering to sleep on the couch. Yet here they are, exactly where they woke up a day and a half ago, him in his boxers and Lydia wearing a pair of pajamas with the periodic table on them. They haven’t slept since they first woke up here, there’s been too much ground to cover.

Her lips are pulled into a tight, worried line, eyes droopy but serious.

“We have to sleep at some point.” He reminds her, wondering if the shadows under his eyes match hers.

“We have to think about what happens if we can’t get back.”

She says that like she’s already accepted it, given up. It’s so completely unlike her that Stiles sits up.

“You’re really worried that we’re going to be stuck here.” He realizes, frowning down at her. She shrugs, sitting up beside him.

 “Stiles…” She’s been chewing on her lips all day, a nervous habit much cuter than Stiles’ tendency to bite his nails. They look swollen and sore now, and he feels a pang of guilt. He’s supposed to figure it out, he’s supposed to fix this. He’s supposed to make her feel safe. “You don’t think this one might be over our heads?”

The urge to touch her, to comfort her, is overwhelming. He reaches out, hand settling on her shoulder.

“A couple years ago, if you’d told me my best friend was going to turn into a _werewolf_ I probably would have said the same thing. But we figured that out, and everything that’s happened since then has been even crazier, and it turned out-”

He stops, remembering the bow and arrow on the back of her leg.

“-we’ve gotten this far.” _But not all of us_. He knows they’re both thinking it, and a familiar wave of shame and regret rolls over him as he remembers his part in that. Her gaze drops to the sheets.

“This is different, you have to know that.” She mumbles. And she just sounds broken. She’s been different since Allison died, she doesn’t seem so bulletproof anymore. She still walks with her head held high, she’s still the brightest person he knows by a wide margin. But she’s just…softer. Like her sharp edges have been slightly dulled by the friction of the past few years. And then there’s the darkness behind her eyes, but that doesn’t worry Stiles quite as much. He knows all about darkness. His hand on her shoulder drifts down to curl around her bicep, thumb gently stroking across her skin.

“I know. But if there’s a way to send us here, then there’s a way to send us back. And if anyone can find it, it’s us, right?” His voice is soft, but strong. He needs her to believe him, he can’t do this without her. She looks back up at him, eyes full of doubt.

“Or Deaton.” She finally concedes. Scott called the vet earlier, and they’re driving back to Beacon Hills tomorrow to see him. It seems like their best lead, for now. He forces a smile.

“Yeah. I’m sure he’ll have some vague and minimally helpful information for us. But hey, it’s a start.”

Her answering smile is so small he almost misses it.

“And if-”

He cuts her off with a sigh, already knowing what her next words will be.

“If we can’t figure out how to get back…we’ll cross that bridge later, alright?”

Her eyes spark a little, like maybe she’s going to argue. But then the exhaustion takes over, dramatically, like her batteries have suddenly died, and she leans back against the pillows.

“Alright.”

He slumps down beside her, folding his hands over his chest to quell the overwhelming urge to throw his arms around her.

“Goodnight, Lydia.”

There’s a pause, like she’s thinking about saying something else. He waits.

“Night, Stiles.”

He falls asleep half hoping that they’ll just wake up back in 2015.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

This time, when Stiles wakes up, Lydia is already gone. For a moment, he wonders if it was all a dream. Then he hears the sound of running water and blinks until the room comes into focus. Definitely still in 2020.

He sits up, stretching his arms above his head until he hears a satisfying _pop_ in his shoulder.

“That’s gross.”

Stiles blinks at Lydia, who he hadn’t heard come in. He rolls his eyes.

“It’s called stretching. We don’t all wake up bright eyed and limber.” He mutters, fully aware that Lydia is actually far from a morning person these days. A towel is wrapped around her head, and all she’s wearing is the kimono from the other day. He can smell the mixture of fragrances from her shampoo and body wash from the bed, it settles like a sweet fog around his head.

“I guess I was just anxious to get going.” She shrugs. And that makes sense. The sooner they get to Beacon Hills, the sooner they have answers. They have at least a three hour drive ahead of them, Stiles looked it up the night before, and he suddenly finds himself anxious to get there as well.

Plus, Beacon Hills is home. Even if it is a Beacon Hills he hasn’t seen for five years.

He rolls out of bed, and for a moment, he thinks he catches Lydia staring, eyes on his chest. But then her gaze is on the closet, and he decides he must have imagined it.

“Okay. I’ll shower and then we can go. See if you can find our wallets.” He reminds her, not anxious to be caught without his again. Her nod is directed at a rack of shoes, but at least he knows she heard him.

The shower doesn’t feel familiar, not yet. But he reaches for the soap with his eyes closed and his fingers find it immediately. It’s a strange sensation, his body knowing something his mind doesn’t.

This time, he remembers to bring a change of clothes with him, and he tugs the jeans onto his still damp legs, running a hand over his chin. He needs to shave again. The razor glides easily over the planes of his face, ones that have sharpened, angled over the years he missed. Lydia’s worries from the night before flash in his mind. If they do get stuck here, this will be his new routine. He wonders if one of them will move out. The apartment has a second bedroom, one that’s currently being used as a den. Maybe they’ll convert it back and just be roommates. The thought of living here without her, or moving out and finding a place of his own, disturbs him. He feels lost enough as it is. Being separated from her will only make that worse for him.

He rinses the last dregs of shaving cream away, and pulls the bathroom door open to find Lydia fully dressed on the bed, face bare and hair pulled into a messy knot on the top of her head. She’s holding a leather wallet open, and frowning into it.

“You found it.” He observes, the cool air of the bedroom deliciously refreshing after the steamy heat of the bathroom. It’s still warm though, and Stiles is reminded that they’re further south than Beacon Hills. She looks up at him.

“Yeah, but…” She tilts the wallet so he can see the contents. A couple bills and no credit cards. No cards of any kind. He frowns.

“That’s all we’ve got?”

“No credit cards, no debit.” She replies, still frowning. Then she holds up what looks like a driver’s license. “I found this, though.”

It is a driver’s license, his. The colors have changed, he notes, but it looks pretty similar to his old one. The picture is different though, as is his listed address.

“Huh.” He pulls the cash out, heart sinking when it totals barely fifty dollars. In the Camaro, that won’t be enough to get to Beacon Hills and back. “Seriously? You didn’t find credit cards anywhere?”

Her brows furrow in irritation.

“No. I’ve got this,” she holds up another wallet, something mint green that he assumes is hers. “-but no cards in this either. I do have another forty though.” It doesn’t make sense. There’s no way that in five years that the country has moved to cash only. Stiles swipes his cellphone off the nightstand, firing off a text to Scott.

_Do you happen to know where Lydia and I keep our credit cards? Can’t find plastic anywhere._

And a minute or so later, Scott replies.

**_On your phone, dude. Just pick a card and tap._ **

Curious, Stiles swipes through the apps on his phone until he finds one labeled _iWallet._ It opens to reveal a list of several credit and debit cards, and what appears to be a punch card for Chipotle. He holds the phone up so Lydia can see.

“It’s all digital, now, I guess.”

Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“That’s…efficient.” She finally says. He agrees, silently, but can’t help but notice the way the corners of her mouth turn down as she looks at it.

“So we can leave now.” He says, breaking the silence. “If you’re ready.”

She nods, picking up her own phone and a small white purse from the foot of the bed. Her navy skirt flutters around her thighs, a light blue tank top tucked into it.

“Okay.” Lydia turns back to him, squaring her shoulders like she’s heading into battle. He blinks.

“Don’t you want a jacket or something? It won’t be as warm there.”

Her eyes roll, even as she reaches for a grey cardigan from the closet.

“Okay, mom.” She mutters, grabbing his hand and dragging him out the door. “Let’s just get on the road already.” He throws their luggage, packed the night before, over his shoulder and follows her out.

Stiles MapQuested the drive before they left, and the printed pages are tucked neatly into the passenger side door. Lydia took one look at them before rolling her eyes and stuffing them into the slot.

“I can’t believe you used MapQuest. I didn’t even think they were still in business. And that was five years ago.” She mumbles from beside him. His fingers tighten a little on the steering wheel, but he forces a smile.

“I don’t know how reliable these phones are. Maybe cell service in 2020 sucks.” He replies. And it’s true. It just makes him feel safer to have the directions printed out in a format that won’t disappear along with their reception.

“I’m surprised you planned that far ahead.” She admits, fiddling with the radio. He shoots her a quick glare, offended.

“I plan.” He says, defensive. She shrugs, seeming to give up on the radio and sitting back in her seat.

“You try.”

“I’m a great planner! I plan stuff all the time!” His voice edges up an octave in indignance.

“Sure, for pack stuff. But you can’t even remember to bring me that book on dark pools I lent you like, six years ago. And you keep _saying_ you’re going to go to Stanford for a tour but you never do.” When he glances at her again, she’s smiling.

“Okay, well, first of all, you’re counting the five years that we were like, in the void. That’s not fair. Second, we live together now, so odds are you probably have that book back. And third, I-” He’s about to tell her that he keeps putting off that trip to Stanford in the hopes that she’ll come with him. He knows it’s where she wants to go, too, but he can’t seem to just come out and ask her. He can hear her waiting for him to finish his sentence, and remembers that they’re not actually together, she isn’t actually into him. And that the Lydia he knows has been firmly rebuffing his advances for years. “I’m guessing since I have a degree in criminology that I did eventually go for that tour after all.” He finishes lamely.

If she suspects that wasn’t what he was originally going to say, she doesn’t let on.

“Huh.” She muses. “Maybe I just moved in with you to get the book back.”

He forces a laugh, but it hits a little too close to home to be comfortable. Why the fuck _did_ she end up with him? He’s been asking himself that ever since they got here. He’d asked Scott that, the day before when they were pumping the alpha for answers.

_I don’t actually know. You didn’t tell us you were together. We just walked in on you guys hooking up one day and that was it._

Not a satisfying answer, really. Barely an answer at all. He remembers shooting Lydia a quizzical look, but she’d just shrugged.

“Makes as much sense as anything else.” He says, now, under his breath. He can tell she hears him by the way her fingers stop tapping against the console.

“What do you mean?”

He curses himself for opening his mouth, as always.

“Nothing. I was thinking we could stop in Albany for breakfast. We should be there around 10:30.”

There’s a long pause, and he silently prays that she’ll let it go.

“Sure.”

He exhales.

.

When they hit Albany, they decide getting to Beacon Hills, and Deaton, is more important than a leisurely breakfast. Which is how they end up in a Panera drive-thru.

“What do you want again?” Stiles asks, peering up at the menu. He can’t decide between just getting a bagel or getting a breakfast sandwich. Coffee is a given, though.

“Avocado, egg white and spinach.” She reminds him, for the third time.

“Right.” He’s probably going to forget that again. “Can you get my phone out of the bag in the back?” This whole digital money thing is probably going to take a while to get used to.

She leans between the seats to reach for his bag, and his eyes snap to the backs of her thighs, exposed where her skirt rides up. The bottom of her tattoo is just barely noticeable. A car honks behind them, and he realizes the line has moved up.

He pulls up to the speaker and places their order, not entirely sure if he got Lydia the right sandwich. She pops back into the front seat a moment later, his phone in her hand and a strange look on her face.

“You okay?” He asks. “Are you carsick or something?”

She shakes her head.

“Stiles…” Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth again, he notices. That’s a bad sign. He pulls up to the second window to pay and grab their food, handing it over to Lydia and pulling back onto the freeway.

“Sorry. You were saying?” He prompts, because she’s fallen silent. And he happens to know that she can eat and talk at the same time. On most people, it would look disgusting. When she does it, it’s adorable.

“Why did you bring the engagement ring?” She asks.

Oh. Right. The ring, which he had packed carefully away in the bag he’d just asked her to dig through. He sighs.

“I just…didn’t want to leave it. I guess I don’t know if we’ll even be going back there, and I…I just didn’t want to leave it.”

It’s the truth, or most of it. But it’s all he’s willing to admit.

“Oh.” Her voice is soft. “Okay.”

They both fall silent, and his mind begins to drift to the years that Scott filled in for them.

This is what he knows so far.

He is, in fact, a police detective. He works for the San Francisco Police Department, and has for the past six months since graduating Stanford with a BS in Criminology and spending a year at the academy. Lydia is an Aerospace Engineer. She makes almost three times as much as Stiles, and works mostly out of Silicon Valley. Stiles would be jealous, if he wasn’t still so confused about all of it.

They went to Stanford together, and lived in the same dorm. According to Scott, there was a month, about halfway into their first semester, where the others genuinely feared one of them would kill the other. The following Christmas break that they were outed to the rest of the pack, so they probably got together sometime in the last half of the semester. They all moved out to San Francisco as a pack, after Stiles graduated the academy. The decision had come from the whole pack needing a break from the constant supernatural drama of the Nemeton, and everything else in the cursed town. They’ve only been out here six months, but Lydia and Stiles have been living together for the past two years.

Malia is still part of the pack, but her and Theo travel, a lot.

Stiles asked for the engagement ring two weeks ago, after a close call at work. It strikes him as funny, they dealt with life or death situations all the time in Beacon Hills, and somehow a human with a gun was enough to push him into making a commitment. Or maybe he just finally had an excuse to do something he’d been waiting to do for years.

He looks over at her now, the tension in her shoulders, fingers tapping on the plastic of the door. She’s anxious. Then again, the last time they were on a long drive together they got stranded at a shady motel and shot five years into the future, so he can’t really blame her.

“Aren’t I usually the one freaking out?” He asks, voice feeling strange and loud in the quiet car. She turns from looking out the window to blink at him.

“I’m not freaking out.” She says, slowly. He snorts.

“My lily white ass. We haven’t even talked to Deaton yet, why are you so convinced that this will end badly?” It comes out a little harsh, probably because her moping is starting to freak him out a little. It’s like she’s disappearing, piece by piece, right in front of his eyes.

 “God!” She hisses angrily, clearly as fed up with this conversation as he is. “I just-I’m tired, Stiles! We can’t catch a break! I want to graduate, and I want to go to college, and I want to win a Field Medal and I don’t want to have to do all of those things while chasing werewolves and Kanimas and time traveling genies around!”

Her voice slowly rises as she speaks, and by the end of it, she’s shouting. Stiles is just ridiculously glad that she’s shouting again.

“I don’t think that was a genie.” He says, just to goad her on. Maybe getting some of her frustration out will be cathartic.

“For all we know it might as well be.” She huffs, folding her arms across her chest. “I had my whole life planned out. I had a boyfriend, and a…a best friend who I loved. And now I’m-” she gestures around the Camaro. “My boyfriends die, and my best friend died. And I can still have the career, but I don’t even want it! I just want to stop being terrified all the time!” She hiccups. Stiles hadn’t even realized she was crying until he hears her voice crack at the end. He looks over to see tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Shit. I’m sorry, okay? I’m an asshole, don’t cry.” He once told her she looks beautiful when she cries, and he stands by that, but it breaks his heart when he hears the muffled sobs beside him. He pulls off onto the shoulder, unbuckling his seatbelt, and leans over to brush her tears away with his thumb.

“You’re a jackass!” She grunts, hitting him. “You did this on purpose!”

He’s pretty sure he’ll have a bruise on his arm tomorrow, but he just sighs, using the sleeve of his hoodie to blot at her face.

“I thought you would just yell and feel better.”

“Well I don’t.” She glares at him, but there’s fire behind her eyes again, so he raises his eyebrows.

“Are you sure about that?”

She hits him again.

“Lydia.” He cups her cheek in his hand, and she lets him.  Something shifts, the mood between them instantly heavy again. “Do you trust me?”

Her eyes go wide, but she nods.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then I need you to hear this. If I could tell you to go live your life, to leave Beacon Hills and never come back, I would. Even though I-we need you. I want you to be happy more than-” His own voice threatens to break, and he clears his throat. “I would let you go. But you’re in this now. You’re not a bystander, you’re a Banshee. And your best bet of figuring out what that means is by sticking with the pack. I wouldn’t ask you to stay if I didn’t think it was the safest place for you. Do you believe that?”

Her green eyes darken a little, from sage to jade, lips parting.

“Yes. I believe that.” He can feel her breath on his wrist. “And I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.” She tells him, like she’s reminding him of her agency, that she doesn’t do things because other people tell her to. As though he could ever forget that.

“So just…believe that I’ll find a way to get us home, okay? At least until we know for sure whether or not it’s possible.”

The silence hangs between them, his hand still on her cheek, thumb almost brushing against her lips. His body responds to her differently now, he’s always reacted to being close to her, but now she’s like a magnet, drawing him in. He suspects it has something to do with chemicals, hormones maybe, their bodies recognizing one another and the history between them. Stiles can’t help but wonder if she feels it too. Ever so briefly, her eyes dart down to his lips, and he takes that as an answer. Not that it’s real for her, just a chemical reaction.

“Okay.” She finally says, but she doesn’t lean away from his touch. It takes every ounce of self-control Stiles possesses to pull away, dropping his hand. It would be cheap to take advantage of something Lydia can’t control. He would never want it that way. But it doesn’t stop him from wanting her.

“Right.” He coughs, voice cracking. “We should get going.”

“Yeah. Deaton’s probably expecting us.” Something about her voice is off, it’s a little breathless.

They don’t talk again until they hit Yuba City, just under an hour outside Beacon Hills. The scenery starts to slowly turn green, and there’s something about the forest thickening around them that’s comforting, familiar.  

“Do you think it’s different?” Her voice is a whisper beside him, and Stiles isn’t even sure if she’s talking to him. But he knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“It’s Beacon Hills.” He says, shrugging. “How different can it be?”


	6. Chapter 6

Very, it turns out.

“Dad?” Stiles pushes through the front door, Scott’s front door, and tries to ignore the weirdness that this is, in fact, where his father now lives as well.

“Stiles?”

The Sherriff’s head appears from around a corner, his body following when he sees Stiles and Lydia standing uncertainly in the entryway.

“Hey.” Stiles waves awkwardly, and Lydia sidles in behind him. Their suitcases are still in the car, their impromptu trip seemed to call for a hotel, especially since it’s technically been years since Stiles has seen his father, but the Sherriff looks happy to see them, if a little surprised. They weren’t even sure he would be here, what with the erratic schedule of a small town lawman, but he hurries toward them from the living room with a smile.

“It’s good to see you.” He says, pulling Stiles in for a hug, and then Lydia, who looks startled for a moment before composing herself. “Both of you. Did we know you were coming?”

We. It’s strange to hear his father to say that and mean somebody other than Stiles.

“Uh, no. We just had some work stuff, last minute.” He forces a smile, taking in the lines around his father’s eyes, etched more deeply than he’s ever seen them. His hair is streaked with white, standing out against the familiar ruddiness of his skin. He looks old. Something about it makes this feel real in a way it didn’t before. Feeling something brush against his palm, Stiles looks down to see Lydia’s small hand slip into his. The Sherriff tracks the movement, brow furrowing. It takes a moment, but Stiles realizes he’s looking for the ring.

“Hi, Mr. Stilinksi.” Lydia smiles brightly.

“Hey now, I’ve told you to call me-”

“Sherriff?” A voice floats in from the kitchen.

Stiles expects it to be Melissa who emerges, but to his surprise it’s someone else entirely.

“Deputy.” Stiles greets Hayden’s sister with a nod. “Sorry, Dad, are you working?” He’s not in uniform, but Deputy Romero is, and he can’t help but glance curiously between the two. The Sherriff shakes his head.

“No, it’s my day off. Well, technically.”

Romero shoots him a guilty glance.

“I should probably go. Thanks for your help. I’ll let you know if there are any updates.” She nods in greeting as she pushes past them through the door.

“Anything interesting?” It’s really not the time, they have enough problems of their own, but the question seems to be second nature to him at this point. His father rolls his eyes fondly, gesturing toward the living room. Instead of heading deeper into the house, Stiles just rocks back on his heels. That earns him a curious frown.

“Don’t you have your own cases to worry about?”

Oh, right. Stiles shrugs.

“Nothing worth sharing. Is Melissa working?”

The Sherriff nods.

“She’s at the hospital, but she’ll be here tonight. Are you guys coming for dinner?”

When Stiles hesitates, Lydia steps forward, cheery smile securely in place.

“We’d love to. I’ve actually got a meeting in about,” she glances at the clock on the wall in front of them, “twenty minutes, but I think we’re free this evening.” Stiles realizes belatedly that the meeting she has is with Deaton, the reason they’re back here in the first place.

“Right.” He clears his throat. “I should probably drop her off, what time do you want us for dinner?”

It’s weird, and formal, and Stiles knows they would have inevitably ended up at this place eventually, his father inviting him to dinner like he’s a guest, because he is, but 2020 Stiles is probably used to it. The older man shrugs.

“Seven?”

“Great.” Lydia grabs his hand, flashing the Sherriff another quick smile. “We’ll see you then.” She tugs him out the door. It’s not until after they’re out of the house that Stiles even realizes he couldn’t breathe. He takes a deep breath now, closing his eyes.

“Thanks, I…” When he opens his eyes, she’s right there, staring up at him in concern. He frowns. “How did you know?” He hadn’t even felt the panic attack coming on until it was over. She folds her arms over her chest.

“It’s not like I’ve never seen you have a panic attack before,” she reminds him. And then seeming to realize how that came out, her face softens. “I just meant, I pay attention,” she amends softly. Stiles is reminded of something Scott said once, in answer to a question.

 _He paid attention_.

He’s always assumed that was one sided, because for the most part it has been. But now he stares down at her, the way her eyes are still big with concern, for him, bottom lip worried between her teeth. Maybe…no. He knows betters than to go down that road by now. It only leads to disappointment.

“Come on,” he grunts eventually, dragging her toward the car, hands still locked together. “We’re going to be late.”

.-.-.-.

“Scott failed to mention _that_.” Deaton mutters, glancing suspiciously between the pair in front of him.

“Um,” Stiles scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “Then what exactly _did_ he tell you?” Because if his friend left out the time travel part of their predicament, it can’t have been a long conversation.

“He just told me you had a problem that might…fall in my area of expertise. I wish I could tell you that he was right…but…” The vet trails off, frowning. Stiles’ heart sinks.

“You don’t know anything?” He asks desperately. He’s already exhausted from the earlier visit with his father, from pretending to be someone that he doesn’t even know. Sighing, Deaton reaches into one of the cabinets in the exam room they’re standing in, pulling out an old leather bound book. It’s not the beastiary Stiles knows, but then again, these days he doesn’t know much.

“I wouldn’t say that. Start at the beginning.” He instructs, placing the book on the countertop and fixing Stiles with a level look. Stiles glances at Lydia, who nods.

“Okay,” he clears his throat. “So we were in the desert-”

“Outside Coyote Springs-” Lydia interjects. Stiles shoots her a look, but Deaton raises his eyebrows.

“In Nevada?”

They both nod, and he gestures for them to continue.

“And we were getting these Bheither fangs-”

“For Derek, because Kate had turned him into a teenager again-”

“And we stopped on the way home at a motel because we’d been driving for hours-”

“No, you left out the part about the spirit gate.” Lydia’s voice cuts over his. Stiles sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Deaton perks up in interest.

“Did you just say the spirit gate?”

Slowly, Lydia nods again.

“I couldn’t see it,” she explains. “But when we went into the basement of this house, the crypt I guess, Stiles saw it. She said I couldn’t see it because I walk with death, whatever that means.”

Still looking curious, the emissary leans forward.

“Who said that?”

“This girl in the parking lot. When we woke up the Jeep was gone, and the only other person around was some woman we’d never seen before. She was wearing the fangs around her neck.” Lydia recounts.

“Supernatural?” Deaton asks. Stiles frowns.

“She was _something_.” He mutters. He can’t forget the flash of tail of he’d seen before she’d disappeared into the woods. Or the unnerving way she’d looked him over, as though she knew something about him, something that both intrigued and frightened her.

“She sure was,” Lydia huffs from beside him. “She said something about how Stiles shouldn’t have been able to see it, the spirit gate, and then she kissed him.” He can’t help but notice the distaste on her face as she recalls the last part of the story.

“And then she freaked out and ran away,” Stiles reminds her, and the flash of mirth on her features is worth the self-deprecation. 

Deaton turns to him.

“This Spirit Gate, you said you saw it in the crypt?” When Stiles nods, the man narrows his eyes in thought. “What did it look like?”

Stiles strains to remember. It feels like a lifetime ago. In some ways, he realizes with shock, it was.

“A lot of wrought iron,” he remembers. “Uh, like those gates celebrities always have, super tall and really ornate. It was just this gate, mounted on the wall. I figured it was meant to be outside, but I guess it was exactly where it was supposed to be.” He scratches his chin.

“That’s fascinating. This woman, was she foreign?”

“European, Slavic I guess?” He offers, shrugging.

“Alright, and then…” Deaton presses.

“Then we realized we were stranded, basically. We tried to find a phone or a computer or something, but there wasn’t anything. So we just went to bed.” The longer they’re stuck here, the further away that night is beginning to feel.

“And then we woke up here, in what’s apparently _our_ apartment, five years later.” Lydia adds. It’s quite a statement, the time traveling thing. But instead of looking shocked or disbelieving, the vet just nods along, intrigued. Like they’re some kind of fascinating plot twist in his favorite daytime soap.

“That’s…I mean time travel is incredibly rare. Even among the supernatural community it’s considered to be science fiction.”

“Well,” Stiles mutters irritably, “I don’t know about the science part but it’s all feeling pretty non-fictional to me.”

Deaton smiles.

“I can imagine. I have some ideas, but I think I might need to bring in backup on this one. Do you mind if I call Argent?”

Stiles throws his hands in the air.

“You can call Deucalion for all I care, I just want some answers.”

Lydia rolls her eyes.

“If you come back later I might have something for you.” Deaton tells them. Stiles thinks about dinner.

“Nine?”

The vet nods. They move to leave, but Deaton stops them, holding out his arm.

“But Stiles?” His voice is low, a warning. “You need to be prepared for the fact that they might not be the answers you want.”

.-.-.-.

“I didn’t think Chris would still be here,” Lydia’s voice floats out from the bathroom. “I guess…I thought he would want to get away from Beacon Hills.”

“Yeah.” Stiles is lost in his laptop, scrolling through his e-mails. He’s been slowly going through the files and correspondence from the SFPD, trying to get a sense of his cases, his career. Maybe Lydia’s pessimism is rubbing off on him, but he suddenly wants to be prepared. If they do end up having to stay in 2020, whether for a few weeks while they figure out how to get back, or forever, it would probably be better to try and keep his career from going completely up in flames.

So far it looks like his short time on the force has been focused mainly on serial killers, homicides which fit into a pattern. It’s not surprising, but he’s also fascinated at the amount of notes and evidence he’s been able to collect in the few months since he graduated the academy. He’s starting to get the feeling that he might not have come by all of the documents entirely legally.

Suddenly Lydia emerges, and his focus is finally pulled away from the computer.

“Oh,” he says, blinking. “You look, uh…”

Her hand flies to her face, which turns uncertain.

“What? Is it too much? I didn’t know how dressed up to-”

“No,” he interrupts her. “You look perfect.” And he means that, he always does when he’s talking about her. Her hair falls in soft waves at her shoulders, the pink of her cheeks matching the soft blush of her sleeveless dress.

 She just ducks her head in acknowledgment, padding over to stand behind him, squinting at the computer screen.

“What are you looking at?”

“Hmm? Oh, my old cases. Trying to get a feel for what kind of a cop I am, you know.” He shrugs.

“How many official reprimands on your file?”

He stares at her, indignant.

“I’ve only been on the force six months!” He mutters. She raises an eyebrow. “…three.”

Her grin is like liquid sunshine, and it’s contagious, even if it is at his expense. God, he’s already in so deep. And it only gets worse, every day they’re stuck here together. He’s starting to forget what it’s like not to have her all to himself. A deeply buried, darkly selfish piece of him wonders how bad it really would be to stay in this place, with her, and live out their lives. But the rest of him would never want to end up with Lydia that way, forced together by circumstance. The cost is too high. Besides, there’s no reason to suspect that she wouldn’t leave him once it became clear they were stuck for good.

“Alright.” He shuts his laptop, grabbing his leather jacket off the back of his chair. Grown up Stiles has an almost embarrassing amount of hoodies still in his wardrobe, but clearly dating Lydia has expanded his style to include some more formal clothes as well. And he has to admit, with his slightly more filled out physique, they don’t look half bad. He’s just glad they’ve yet to encounter a situation where he’s forced to wear one of the suits.

They make it halfway to the car before he catches her shivering.

“I can’t believe you didn’t bring a jacket,” he mutters, even as he shrugs off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders. “We’re not in San Francisco anymore.”

She just rolls her eyes, holding the jacket closed at her neck.

“I have one now, don’t I?”

Her slow smile catches him off guard, and there’s something there he doesn’t recognize on her. Something that reminds him of the way Malia sometimes looks at him.

“Uh...” He pulls open the car door. “Let’s go.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really trying to be better about updates, I hope these have been okay. Let me know!

“Stop fidgeting.”

“I’m not fidgeting. I’m just…”

“Nervous?” Lydia asks, cocking her head to study him. Stiles sighs.

“I guess. It’s weird, right? I feel like I should tell him but…I’m not even totally sure that’s actually him, you know?”

She nods. When he continues to drum his fingers on the thigh of his jeans, she grabs his hand. It’s almost starting to feel natural, the way her fingers slide between his. He squeezes her hand, a silent thank you. Then the door in front of them swings open. Melissa stands there, blinking at them.

“Since when do you knock?” She wants to know, but her lips stretch into a warm smile. When her arms open, Stiles steps into them, hugging her back.

“I’m trying this new thing, it’s called being polite.” He tells her, and somehow this is easier than seeing his own father was. She laughs.

“That _is_ new. Come on in,” she mutters, stepping back to let them in and throwing an arm around Lydia’s shoulders. She doesn’t look terribly different, though there are lines at the corners of her eyes that Stiles doesn’t remember. “So how was the drive? Your dad said you guys didn’t stay long earlier…”

Stiles takes his jacket back from Lydia, hanging it on the coat rack.

“Fine,” the redhead answers. “I mean you know how Stiles drives, but we got here in one piece.”

Melissa snorts.

“A miracle. Your dad’s just finishing up on the grill outside, you want some drinks?”

He bobs his head noncommittally, but they follow her into the kitchen. She hands him a beer, which startles him until he remembers that he’s not underage anymore.

“Thanks.”

She offers Lydia one too, and then wanders out toward the living room. It’s different, and then Stiles realizes that the reason for this is that there are now pictures of him mixed among those of Scott. It’s not the McCall house anymore, it’s McCall-Stilinski.

“I’m just going to wash my hands,” Lydia says suddenly, veering off down the hallway and disappearing. Stiles stares after her for a moment, then sinks onto the couch next to Melissa. The older woman turns to him as soon as Lydia is out of earshot.

“So, no ring?”

Stiles blinks, then remembers the way his father’s gaze lingered on Lydia’s hand earlier.

“Uh, no,” he mutters. “We aren’t-I didn’t…” The memory of his mother’s ring sitting in that box has his throat constricting. He’d played it off, for Lydia’s sake, but he was never expecting to see that ring again. He always thought she’d been buried with it.

“Hmm.” Melissa taps her finger gently against the neck of her beer bottle. “I would ask if it’s cold feet, but I mean, it’s you. And Lydia.”

He can’t help but smile at that. In all the weirdness of their current situation, it’s easy to forget how well she knows him.

“It’s not that, we’ve just…got some other stuff going on. It seems better to wait until everything isn’t so…messy.”

Her eyebrows draw together, concern etching lines into her forehead.

“Is something wrong?”

And he wants to tell her, to tell his father. He wants all of this to go back to normal.

“No,” Stiles says, forcing a smile. “It’s just a timing thing.”

Melissa nods, as though that makes perfect sense. They both jump when someone comes around the corner, but it’s just the Sherriff.

 “Hey,” he says, glancing between the pair as he leans down to press a kiss to his wife’s head. “What’s going on in here?”

Melissa glances at the doorway, then back at him.

“I was just asking about the-” She points to her own engagement ring. The sheriff nods.

“Ah, and the answer was?”

But neither Stiles nor Melissa get a chance to reply to that, as Lydia walks in, pausing when she notices the three of them staring.

“What?” She asks, hands fluttering nervously at her sides. “Did I get water on my dress?”

Stiles shakes his head, getting up to walk over and slide an arm around her waist. He’s not sure what made him do it, maybe just how uncomfortable she looked. He wonders if playing this part is harder for her than he’d imagined.

“No, we were just talking about you,” he announces, and his father rolls his eyes.

“Really?” She wonders, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What about me?”

Stiles just shrugs, earning him a flick on the ear.

“Steaks are done,” the Sherriff announces, almost as an afterthought. Stiles doesn’t remove his arm from around Lydia’s waist as they make their way to the kitchen, and she doesn’t make any move to pull away either.

Dinner is surprisingly familiar, despite the glaring differences in their lives and dynamics, but the steak tastes the same as it always has, and he and his father bicker the same way they always have.

“Okay, but the M.O. was different. The perp didn’t break any windows, the shower wasn’t running, and none of the girl’s shoes were missing,” Stiles argues, through a mouthful of potato.

“So you think it’s a copycat? There were details at this crime scene that matched the three other murders that no one could know. Even some of my deputies don’t have eyes on that stuff.” The Sherriff counters, taking a swig of his beer. Melissa holds up her hand before Stiles has a chance to respond.

“I think that’s enough shop talk for the dinner table.” She says, voice firm. Both men blink, then smile apologetically.

“Oh,” Lydia jumps up suddenly, startling Stiles into dropping his fork. “Stiles, we’re going to be late.”

He glances up at the clock, swallowing a curse when he sees the time.

“I’m sorry Dad, Melissa, this is super rude, but-”

“Go,” his father waves him away, biting his lip. “You’ve never helped with the dishes before, why start now?” He’s clearly teasing, but that doesn’t stop the flare of guilt in his stomach as Stiles pushes out from the table, shooting his new step-mother a remorseful glance.

“Maybe we’ll see you before you leave?” She asks, face hopeful.

“We’ll try,” Lydia promises, wrapping a hand around Stiles’ bicep and dragging him toward the door.

He grabs his jacket off the hook by the door and holds it out. She steps into it automatically. Just another thing that’s easier, more natural than it should be. Like the way she takes a little step back before he opens the door because she knows he’s holding it open for her, or the way he doesn’t have to actually say anything to elicit an answer to the question on his mind.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be good news, Stiles.” She says quietly, voice drifting across the center console as they make the rushed, but mostly silent drive to the animal clinic. “I really don’t know.” But the tense set of her jaw and the way her skin is stretched almost translucent across her knuckles tells a very different story. And if he’s being honest, whatever bad feeling has settled in the pit of her stomach, whatever fear is humming quietly at the back of her neck that has her so upset, he’s feeling it right along with her.

They pull up and jump out of the car, a few minutes past nine. Their fingers are laced together before they push through the clinic doors, and he thinks the feeling of her firm grip might be the only thing keeping him from dissolving into another panic attack. The uneven bump of his heart is like a threat, a warning of how fragile he sometimes is.

“Lydia.” Chris Argent greets them as they round the corner to the examination room. “Stiles.”

The redhead’s fingers tighten painfully around his for a moment.

“Mr. Argent.” She just ducks her head. Stiles waves with his free hand. The vet is nowhere to be seen.

“Deaton filled me in on your predicament. It sounded familiar, so I asked Gerard-”

Stiles’ eyebrows shoot way up. His comment about Deucalion earlier had been a joke, but even the blind, psychopathic alpha would have been a preferable ally than the elder Argent.

“-and he pointed me to this.” Chris holds up something that looks specifically like a bible.

“He…told you to find Jesus?” Stiles retorts, eyeing the book suspiciously. Chris sighs, but there’s a trace of fondness in it.

“This isn’t a bible, it’s a bestiary. It just happens to focus exclusively on supernatural beings found in and around the scripture.”

“O-kay…”

“And?” Lydia interjects, clearly anticipating the sarcasm Stiles already has brewing on the subject of religion.

“Have either of you ever heard of le voyageur?”

Both Stiles and Lydia blink. Taking that, and their following silence as a no, Chris continues.

“Alright. Assuming you both have some…general sense of Christian history and literature….some angels are given the opportunity to assent, become gods. But it is a choice, and some of them reject the amount of responsibility and constraint that come with making that commitment. Instead, they choose to become human. Or, partially human.”

“Angels.” Stiles repeats. Lydia shushes him.

“Yes, Stiles. Angels. And though they assume human form, their true nature is one of pure thought, which allows them to manipulate dimensions. Theoretically-“ he taps the bestiary as if to emphasize his skepticism, “-because thought is the foundation of all reality.”

His head beginning to hurt, Stiles holds up a hand.

“And time being one of those dimensions, you’re saying these Voyageurs can also manipulate time?” Lydia’s voice startles him, despite the vice-like grip she’s keeping on his hand, he’d almost forgotten she was there. Chris nods. Something begins to gnaw at Stiles.

“Before we go any further,” he interrupts, “-who exactly is supposed to be the voya-whatever-time-traveling-fallen angel in this story? The girl at the motel? Or-”

“You.”

The room seems to empty of air, everything perfectly still for a moment, then-

“Ha!” He barks out a nervous laugh, the other two staring at him in surprise. “Come on,” he mutters when Lydia frowns. “An angel? Seriously?” Her thumb strokes across the back of his hand, calming the nerves that kicked up when Chris started his story. It’s totally ridiculous.

“Stiles…” Looking like she’s going to shush him again, Lydia squeezes his arm. “Is it? Is it more ridiculous than any other time-travel alternative?”

And maybe she has a point, but-

“Yes.” He says vehemently. “Wh-Lydia, yes. It’s-” he turns to Chris. “I mean, if I was part angel, don’t you think I would have known? And that’s if I even-I don’t exactly buy into the whole angels thing. And what about the Nogitsune? You’re telling me being an angel wouldn’t protect me from possession by an evil spirit?”

He immediately feels guilty, because they all know Chris doesn’t need reminding of the spirit who took everything from him, who took Allison from all of them. But they came here for answers, and this isn’t an answer, it’s an impossibility.

“There are bits and pieces about the ability of humans to become voyageurs. It’s unclear as to whether or not that part is even true, but it’s plausible as well.”

“Plausible? How is any of this plausible? Are you telling me-” Stiles steps away from Lydia, head swiveling between the two others in the room incredulously, “-that after _everything_ that has happened to us that you still believe in God? In _angels_? And you think that me, the person who k-that I could be one?”

“Voyageurs aren’t technically angels, not anymore.” Chris tells him, and the pain in his eyes is poorly masked, making Stiles feel even worse about his outburst. “I don’t think you understand exactly how rare the ability to travel through time is, even in the supernatural world. And the kind of power that would be required for what happened to you two…there aren’t a lot of options, Stiles.”

“Say Stiles _is_ a voyageur,” Lydia says quietly, and Stiles glances over at her. “And that he brought us here, accidentally. How would he get us back?”

The hunter scratches his beard, looking wary.

“The book makes it out to be as simple as just…thinking it. Since voyageurs are beings of pure thought, they can choose to essentially just focus their energy on traveling through the dimensions.”

“That’s it?” The redhead’s brow furrows, glancing between the men as if she’s missing something. “He just has to think about going back?”

“There’s a catch,” Stiles says immediately, reading Chris’ body language. “I’ve been thinking about going back since we got here. So pretending I buy any of this, why aren’t we already back in 2015?”

“That’s the problem, Stiles. You don’t believe it.” The older man sighs, blue eyes tired. “If a voyageur is not self-aware, it’s possible for them to travel accidentally, but they lack the focus to be able to control their abilities. Which is probably how you got here, and why you can’t seem to go back.”

“So,” there’s a tinge of desperation to her voice now, Lydia’s grip on his hand tightening painfully. “If we can just get him to believe it, he can reverse this.”

Chris nods slowly.

“Theoretically. But there’s something else. Voyageurs aren’t supposed to be able to take passengers. That kind of travel is too hard on humans, or any other mortal beings.”

Stiles splutters.

“So now I’m _immortal_?”

They ignore him, Lydia frowning at Chris.

“Well, obviously, he can. I’m proof of that.”

“Right. As for that, I don’t really have an answer for you.”

Something suddenly occurs to Stiles.

“Where’s Deaton?”

 “He had some veterinary emergency,” Chris says, shrugging. “And he said something about a lead on someone else who might be able to help you. He’ll call you when he knows something.”

“Oh, someone who can help me get in touch with my time traveling angel powers? That’s good,” he bobs his head jerkily.

“I know it’s a lot to process-”

Stiles just makes a noise of disbelief.

“-but you’re closer to finding a way back to your time. You’re not stuck here. That’s good news.”

And he wants to believe that, he really does, if not for his own sake then for Lydia’s. He just can’t. Still, he forces a smile, nodding.

“Okay.”

Chris moves toward the hallway, boots thudding dully on the cement floor.

“I’ve got to go, I’m supposed to be on a flight in less than two hours. Everything I have I’ve e-mailed to you, Stiles. Good luck.” Then he disappears around the corner, leaving Stiles standing in the silence, Lydia still clutching his arm.

After a few minutes, she’s the one to break the silence.

“Stiles,” she says quietly, and her voice is so soft, so careful. He can’t look at her, afraid that seeing her face, her hopeful, trusting face, will be too much on top of everything else.

“We should get going, back to the hotel,” he replies woodenly, starting toward the door. She holds fast to his bicep, walking with him.

“I think we should t-”

“I can’t yet.”

She falls silent, not speaking until they push through the door of the hotel room.

“It’s not that crazy.”

He laughs.

“It’s exactly that crazy.” The conversation has been playing over and over and over in his mind, a loop he can’t turn off. “The only thing crazier than this would have been Argent saying I actually was God.”

She hangs the jacket, his jacket, on the back of a chair and steps out of her shoes. Even in his distracted state he appreciates how tiny she always is without her heels, barely coming up to his chin. It makes her seem deceptively vulnerable, despite him knowing exactly what she’s capable of. He wants to protect her, to fix this. But he’s no angel.

“Why?” She wonders. “Why is this so hard for you to believe? I’m a banshee, Scott’s a werewolf, Kira’s a kitsune. How is this different?”

“How-Lydia, there are no such things as angels, for starters.” He’s pacing agitatedly now, still avoiding her gaze.

“And if I’d asked you three years ago if there was such thing as werewolves, wouldn’t you have said the same thing?”

He snorts.

“That depends on if by three years ago you mean 2012 or 2017.”

“This is all we have to go on.” And if she sounded desperate before, in the animal clinic, it’s nothing compared to the despair he hears in her voice now. She’s clutching at straws, trying to hold onto the last shred of hope that they have. And he’s taking that away from her.

Besides, she’s right.

“I’m willing to believe it, but it doesn’t matter what _I_ believe.”

“And if I don’t believe it, we’re stuck here,” he finishes, saying what he knows she wouldn’t. Even though it’s his fault they’re here in the first place, she won’t put that blame on him. He doesn’t deserve that kind of forgiveness, but she’s always given it to him. After this, after Allison. And as the memories wash over him, he’s reminded of exactly why all this is impossible to begin with. “Lydia, I _can’t_.”

“But _why_?” she presses, and he can see the trembling of her lip, the one he’s sure she’s trying to hide.

“Because it’s _me_ , okay? I’m not an angel. I’m nothing. I’m human, and worse, I’m a murderer. And you’re a scientist, can you really believe that there’s a god out there? One who let my mother lose her mind, who decided you’ll spend the rest of your life surrounded by death, who stood by and watched while we keep losing people over and over and over again? You think they’re that cruel? Or that apathetic?” His voice rises over the course of his rant, and by the end he’s shouting. Lydia doesn’t seem to take it personally, but her eyes are huge and sad, and he’s knows that’s because of him. He’s hurting her, and he’s taking her hope away, and all of this is his fault but he can’t seem to stop. When her eyes drift to his hands, clenched tightly into fists, his follow and register the shaking.

Slowly, cautiously, she crosses the room and takes his hand in both of hers, flattening it.

 “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” There’s a practiced cadence to her words, the mark of something recited from memory, something that’s been read a hundred times. He stares at her.

“Is that-are you quoting Sherlock Holmes?

“This is what I know,” she murmurs, voice low but firm. “We’re here. And the only explanation than anyone can come up with for how we got here, and why, is that you are a Voyageur. Those are the facts, Stiles. You’re a detective, if you only had one lead to go on, even if it sounded impossible, what would you do?”

He closes his eyes, trying to ignore the warmth spreading through his fingers and up his arm where she’s touching him. If either of them were an angel, it seems a glaring mistake that it wouldn’t be her.

“I’d follow it. I’d pursue it until I either found an answer or a dead end.” He admits, opening his eyes and looking down at her.

She nods.

“Why don’t you start by checking your e-mail?”

Right. The e-mail from Chris. That’s something he can do, he thinks. Baby steps. Sitting at the desk, he flips his laptop open and scrolls through the e-mails he’s been getting from work until he finds one from the hunter. And as he scrolls, and scrolls, and scrolls, his brow furrows. The Argent had made it seem like there was hardly any information on these voyageurs, but it seems like there are maybe two hundred pages attached to the e-mail.

“Um,” he mutters. “I think we might need to use the printer.”

Fifteen minutes later they’re huddled in the business center off the lobby, Lydia standing warily by the door in case anyone decides to come check out what they’re printing.

“I think someone’s coming,” Lydia hisses, and Stiles turns back to the printer in a panic.

“There are still like fifty pages left!” He whispers, peering anxiously through the glass door. The man in question walks up to the door they’re both half-pressed against, then walks past it without a second glance. Lydia visibly relaxes, and beside her, Stiles slumps against the wall.

“You know, I doubt anyone would actually ask to see what we’ve printed,” she points out. “And even if they did, we could just say we’re writing a novel or something.”

He grunts noncommittally at that, eyes trained on the printer’s LCD display. Twenty pages to go.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be printing two hundred and fifty pages of anything. And honestly, I don’t think I have it in me to explain this tonight,” he eventually replies tiredly, collecting the thick stack of paper as the printer finally shuts off.

“We’ve taken on a pack of alphas, a Nogitsune, and a Darach, but you’re worried about the concierge?” There’s something so familiar about Lydia’s dry tone that he actually finds it soothing.

“Would you just-come on, let’s get back to our room before anyone sees this contraband,” he says, waving the pages at her.

She rolls her eyes at the word _contraband_ , but follows him back into the elevator. That overwhelming pressure from earlier, the fear, it’s starting to fade. The doubt still lingers in the back of his mind, but he’s beginning to accept that if this their only chance to get back to their own time, he’ll have to get over his reservations.

A few hours later they’re both laying on the bed, pages of biblical lore and anecdotal evidence about les voyageurs scattered between them.

“Have you found _anything_ about how to actually control the time travel thing?” Stiles asks blearily, scrubbing the back of his hand rough across his drooping eyes.

All he gets in response is a groan, and when he glances over, he sees her curled into a ball, eyes closed, hand still clutching a crumpled page. Sighing, he collects the mess of paper and drops it in a pile on the nightstand. Carefully, he slides the comforter out from under her, and then tugs it right up to her chin. She makes a soft noise of contentment, the last shred of tension melting out of her face as she slips entirely into sleep. There’s something about it, the childlike innocence on her face, the way she still trusts him so completely, even after everything he’s done, that has his heart constricting painfully. He’s just letting her down, again.

He gets up to turn off the light, tugging off his shirt and jeans, and slides into bed beside her. She rolls over, into him, face pressing into his chest. He’s halfway gone when she speaks, a mumble so low he almost mistakes it for a snore.

“-nothing,” is all he catches at first. Tentatively, he glances down at her but her eyes are still closed.

“Lyds?” His whisper is soft, not wanting to wake her if she’s still asleep. But she just moves closer, tighter, lips moving against his skin.

“You’re not nothing, Stiles. You are everything I’ve got.” And the way she says it, so sincere yet so offhand, is the last piece falling into place for him. Whatever she needs him to be, he’ll be.


	8. Chapter 8

“Try again.”

Stiles closes his eyes, memories swirling behind them. He thinks of the motel room, the bed, the way it smelled. Like old sweat and stale cigarette smoke, and a hint of Lydia’s lavender shampoo. The way it felt, the sheets rough and itchy against his arms, his legs, the contrast of Lydia’s soft skin where it touches his. He tries not to let that distract him. With every ounce of focus within him, he imagines them there, back when they should be. He concentrates so hard that his head starts to pound, the picture going black around the edges, until-

“Wait, Stiles, stop.” The worry in Lydia’s voice pulls him back to the present, the living room of their apartment in San Francisco, and he blinks.

“What?”

“Your”- she spins on her heel, grabbing a box of tissues from the desk beside them. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Now that she mentions it, he can taste copper at the back of his throat, feel the sickly slow drip. Making a face, he takes a tissue, pressing it to his nose.

“So, that went well,” he mutters darkly, wincing when his own voice sends a wave of pain through his skull. His voice is thick, distorted by what is quickly becoming an uncontrollable nosebleed. Lydia’s face appears directly in front of him, eyes wide with concern.

“Are you okay?”

He shrugs.

“It’s just a nosebleed.” But there’s something in her expression that’s making him uncomfortable, a familiar sliver of fear. She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. “What?”

And then her eyes go cloudy, a million miles away, and he knows.

“It’s okay,” he says softly, lacing his fingers through hers. “Go ahead.”

For the first time in a long time, she doesn’t. She clamps her lips together, shaking her head.

“Lydia-” This doesn’t seem healthy, he can practically feel the vibrations rolling off of her, the energy she’s trapping inside. Her hand is grasping his so tightly that he swears he can hear joints popping.  After a minute or so, she lets out a long breath, her grip loosening, the color returning to her cheeks.

“It’s fine,” she says, but it doesn’t _sound_ fine, she sounds exhausted and frightened, and he want to know, but he doesn’t want to push.

“Is it?”

Her hazel eyes focus on him, careful, considering.

“You’re…cold.”

“Cold?” And then he understands. “Oh, you mean, like, _cold_.” Something suddenly occurs to him. “Didn’t Argent say Voyageurs were immortal? On account of the whole used to be an angel thing?” He runs over the hunter’s words in his head, trying to remember the specifics of it. They have hundreds of pages of literature, but so much of it is just lore, unconfirmed and ultimately contradictory, that it feels a bit like using the bible to study the history of evolution.

 “Mmm,” Lydia frowns. “Uh, yeah.”

He flashes her a wry grin. “You don’t look convinced.”

“Maybe I’m wrong.” The words, so hopeful, fall flat between them. They’re both too smart to really believe that. Then, a little more convincingly, “Sometimes I interpret things wrong. Maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe its not you.”

“It’s only the two of us here, technically,” he reminds her. “So unless you’re predicting your own death, or could somehow feel the death of someone five years in the future before we got here, I think we can pretty safely assume that it’s me.” Her first warning had come in the parking lot, back in 2015, and even then she’d been sure it was him.

Besides, if the alternative is that Lydia is the one in danger, he’ll gladly take another sword to the stomach. Or claws to the throat. Or a million terrifying, gruesome supernatural deaths. Anything, if it means that she survives.

Of course, if he dies, she’s stuck here.

“Are you scared?” She wonders suddenly. He blinks at that.

“Sure. But I’ve been scared since I was twelve, so. Even this whole ‘ _your life is in mortal danger’_ or, actually, would it be immortal danger in my case?”

She makes a noise, a mix of amusement and impatience, and he continues.

“Anyways, the dying thing. Not new.” And, he thinks privately, not the thing he’s most afraid of anymore. That would be losing her. God, she looks sad, in that moment, his words a reminder of everything their circumstances have stolen from them. Their innocence, their freedom, friends.

Pieces of themselves, bigger every time. Sometimes Stiles wonders if one day there won’t be anything left. If he trusts the reality they’re in now, he supposes it will take longer than five years to completely waste away. 2020 Stiles seems to be doing alright.

“Are you sure you’re ready for work, tomorrow?”

She’s changing the subject. He allows it.

“No. But I can’t really just never show up to the station again. I’ll get fired. And we still don’t know how this works, if the changes we make will be permanent.” His mind runs through the various possible outcomes of going back to 2015, the eventualities that might come from the choices they make. “Do you want to end up back here in five years and have to support your unemployed fiancé?”

She doesn’t say anything, and Stiles suddenly realizes the assumption he’s made.

“I mean-I didn’t mean we’ll-”

She cuts him off, yawning.

“I know. Well, I’m supposed to be at the office at seven, so we should probably get to bed.” They’d spent most of the day driving back from Beacon Hills, and between the excitement of the week, and the amount of energy he just spent trying to telepathically transport them five years into the past, he’s exhausted.

 “Does that mean I have to get up?” He wants to know, laying back on the couch, eyes closed. Lydia’s voice drifts over, from somewhere in the bedroom.

“You’re a grown up, Stiles. If you fall asleep on the couch I’m not going to carry you to bed.”

He grins sleepily.

“I’d do it for you.”

“I weigh a hundred and ten pounds.”

“I weigh…actually,” he mumbles, considering the recent changes in his body. “I don’t know. Future me must go to the gym.”

“Clearly.”

His eyes fly open.

“What was that?” He sits up, staring into the bedroom with his eyebrows raised. Lydia is sitting on the bed, tying her hair into a knot on the top of her head. When she notices him staring at her, her cheeks flush pink.

“What?”

“You said-”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I said future me must go to the gym,” he recounts, getting up and making his way to the bedroom. “And you said ‘ _Clearly’_ , as in, yes, Stiles, I’ve noticed your suddenly buff and sculpted body. Have you been checking me out?” He wiggles his eyebrows at her. She just rolls her eyes.

“No.”

“Oh _really_?” He’s tired, and yes his head hurts, but there’s something so perfect about the way a flush burns down her neck as he stalks toward her that makes all of this seem almost okay.

“Stiles.” She sounds exasperated. But her eyes flick toward him.

 “It’s okay, you can tell me.” He schools his face into a serious expression, stopping just in front of where she sits on the bed. She doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Alright, you’re jacked now. Happy?”

He grins, the kind that his father used to warn him would one day split his face in half. Then he stifles it, flopping back on the bed beside her with a bored look.

“Meh.”

When her hand comes down on his stomach, hard, it knocks the air out of him.

“Looks like you need to work on your abs,” she decides, looking amused that the action has winded him.

“I wasn’t prepared,” he mutters, sitting up and glaring at her.

“Right.” She snorts. “Like that was the problem.”

Now they’re both sitting up on the bed, faces inches apart. Stiles realizes this as she sighs, and he can smell the peppermint of her chewing gum in her breath. His eyes dart to her lips, he wonders vaguely if they’ll taste the same as they did five years ago, and-

He blinks, suddenly remembering where he is. This is _Lydia_. And he’s Stiles. And even if some of the chemistry of their future selves is lingering between them, it’s not real, not for her. With great reluctance, he leans back, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. The headache’s come back full force, almost knocking him over.

He groans.

“Hey.” He feels a small hand on his face, thumb pressing lightly against his temple. It feels good, barely, but it’s an improvement. “Are you okay?”

His eyes flutter open, stomach jolting when he finds Lydia’s face once again inches from his own.

“I’ll live,” he mutters, and she parts her lips uncomfortably, reminding them both that he might be wrong about that one. “It’s just a headache.”

“Is it?”

He shrugs.

“Probably?”

Her eyes narrow.

“Stiles-”

“Weren’t you going to go to bed?” He reminds her, hoping to stave off any additional conversation. He loves her voice, usually, thinks she should narrate every audiobook ever published, could listen to her talk forever. But even the smallest noises right now are like white hot pokers to the skull, and he just wants quiet. She watches as he gets up, tugging his shirt over his head. But she’s not watching like she was a few minutes ago, as though she’s just enjoying the view. He can tell she’s looking for something out of place, something wrong. “I just want to go to bed,” he repeats.

She relents.  

“Okay.”

He makes a beeline for the bathroom, where brushes his teeth and washes his face. When he catches sight of the stubble dusting his chin, he sighs. He’ll have to shave it in the morning, knows he shouldn’t be surprised at exactly how fast his facial hair grows, considering that he’s always been a fairly hairy kid. And while the prospect of growing a beard had seemed manly and cool as a teenager, the novelty, apparently, wears off pretty quickly.

After taking a quick shower to get rid of the smell of blood that’s lingering in his nose, he slides into bed beside Lydia.

“Did you take some Advil?”

He was almost hoping she’d already fallen asleep.

“Yeah.”

“Did it help?”

He sighs.

“No.” And it continues to push and throb against his skull, this persistent pain that almost feels alive. Beside him, the sheets rustle, and then she’s curled up against him, her breath warm against his back where she’s pressing her face into it.

It’s intimate, and new, but it feels familiar, it feels like-

His train of thought is cut off as the pain slowly begins to recede, not at once, and not all of it, but enough. As it ebbs away, so does his consciousness, the strain of his earlier mental activities leaving him exhausted. Eventually, he falls asleep, arm trapping the one of hers that winds around his chest, holding on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, had a bit of writers block so this chapter is a little shorter, but they won't all be like that. Next Up: Stiles pretends to know what he's doing at work.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry.
> 
> I know that was a super long break. No excuses, just, thank you, if you're still here. I was stuck on this one and I'm hoping now that it's out I can work up a little more momentum.

“Christ.” Stiles stares at the mess in front of him, stomach turning. It figures that his first day back at work, or first day ever, really, would be something like this. The girl in front of him lies prone on the ground, hair falling over her face. The urge to look away finally gets the better of him, and he blinks, looking up at the coroner. Her lined face is sympathetic, and he hates it. He’ll need to get better at hiding his disgust if he doesn’t want to blow his cover. 

Beside him, a uniformed officer coughs.

“Waste of a pretty face.”

Stiles turns slowly to stare at him, unimpressed.

“I’d say the loss is a lot more than a pretty face,” Stiles says slowly, anger burning low in his stomach. He’s not sure what exactly it is about this man’s attitude that bothers him so much, aside from the obvious lack of respect, but there’s something. The officer, at least ten years his senior, just shrugs, unconcerned.

“Yeah.”

He’d gotten the call only twenty minutes after showing up to the precinct. He’d almost been relieved, no more paranoid small talk with the other detectives, trying to figure out who he knew and who he didn’t, what to say to draw the least attention to his five years of missing memory. But now he’s here, standing over a dead teenager, and it occurs to him that their pack has always tried not to be around for this part. The victim can’t be more than fourteen, deep purple bruises ringing her neck like a tattoo. He doesn’t need to ask for the cause of death, but he does.

“Asphyxiation due to strangulation,” the coroner confirms. He nods, squatting to peer at the very slight striping of the mark.

“Is this…from rope? Or some kind of braided cord?” He gestures to the pattern. The coroner nods.

“Could be.”

“And who called this in?” Stiles asks, turning back to the cop milling behind him. His nametag reads _Barton_ , which Stiles will remember, if only so he can more easily avoid him.

Barton flips open his notebook.

“Uh, the woman who lives there,” he points to a house just up the street from where their crime scene is, in the middle of the road. “She brought her dog out to do his business and saw the body. Says she doesn’t recognize the vic, but also didn’t get too close.”

Well, that’s understandable.

“And that was at eight, so…” Stiles trails off, thoughtful. “She must have been dumped here just before, or someone would have seen her. This is a busy street.”

“And yet no one saw anything,” Barton mutters, and for the first time, Stiles agrees with the disdain in his voice. San Francisco is no Beacon Hills. People don’t want to talk to the cops, and even if they did, they’re not likely to remember much.

“Someone did.” Stiles says, shaking his head. “Someone always does.”

* * *

“How’s work?” Stiles asks, eyeing his sandwich warily before pushing it away. He doesn’t feel much like eating. Through the phone, Lydia sighs.

“Boring. I spent one day reading up on the work we do here and I think I’m already overqualified. I can’t believe this is what I do.”

There’s real irritation in her voice, and it takes him by surprise.

“Well…” He makes a noise of understanding. “We moved out here as a pack, maybe the timing was just off for you. Maybe this is the job that made the most sense while we settled in, and you were going to look for something else.”

“Yeah,” she hums. “Maybe. What about you? Closed any cases?”

She’s joking, he knows, but he’s raw at the edges and her words dig right in. He wishes he had a clue where to start with his case from the morning, that girl laid out in the road like a piece of garbage, but he’s got nothing. It doesn’t feel right.

“Not exactly,” he answers eventually. Lydia instantly picks up on the tension in his voice.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, though she can’t see it. “It’s just-” The words sound stupid, even in his head. He’s in a café, away from the precinct, needed to clear his head. Still, he jerks his head to the side, glancing around before pressing his phone a little tighter to his face. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about the fact that being a homicide detective would mean working with, like, homicides.”

Feeling like an idiot, he sits back in his chair, closing his eyes.

But instead of mocking him, Lydia just makes a sympathetic noise.

“I-” but she gets cut off, a deep voice mumbling something in the background. “I’m sorry, Stiles, I’ve got to go. We’ll talk when I get home.”

The word in her voice, so casually spoken, catches him off guard. He doesn’t know what else she’d call it, the apartment maybe, but it doesn’t sound wrong. It doesn’t even sound unfamiliar.

And suddenly, ridiculously, there’s a light at the end of this dark day again.

“Yeah,” he mutters, knowing she’s already hung up. “See you at home.”

* * *

His afternoon isn’t much better than his morning. He does a bit of research on the neighborhood, past crimes there, but there’s nothing that seems connected to his homicide. The other officers don’t seem to expect a lot of him, and it occurs to him that it’s not really common for someone to bounce fresh from the academy straight into a detective’s desk. He probably upset the pecking order just by showing up.

The detective who sits across from him, a young guy by the name of Andy Wu, throws something into the trash next to Stiles’ desk. Sighing when Andy misses, Stiles bends over to pick up the piece of paper, dropping it in the basket before returning to Barton’s notes on the neighbor who called in that morning.

“Sorry,” Andy calls over his monitor, and Stiles just shrugs. They’re both junior detectives, and from the cues Stiles has been getting all day, they’re friendly enough.

“S’fine.” He mumbles, checking his e-mail again. They’re still waiting for the results of the autopsy to come in, and without the ID that will most likely come with that, he doesn’t have a lot to go on.

“It’s gonna be a while before they’re done with the autopsy,” Andy tells him, and Stiles looks up to see the other man watching him intently from a few feet away. There’s something on his face that makes Stiles nervous. Like maybe the other detective is actually good at his job and has picked up on the fact that something’s off. “You know that.”

“Yeah.” Stiles bobs his head, because he actually did know that. But he can’t help feeling impatient, frustrated. It’s kind of like this is his first case, considering he doesn’t remember any of the ones that came before it, and with the victim being so young…he drags a hand haggardly across his face. “Yeah it’s just the young ones, you know.”

Andy nods, mouth slanting in that expression people make when they’re trying to be apologetic but don’t really have anything to say.

Stiles glances at the clock in the bottom corner of his computer screen. It’s already four-thirty. He pushes his chair out from his desk, cracking his neck as he stands.

“Shifts done,” he mutters, swiping his keys from the desk, wanting bitterly to never come back here, but also not wanting to leave. Andy checks his phone, blinking at the time, then looks back up at Stiles.

“Me and Renner were going to grab some beers at Doolin’s, you wanna come?”

It’s nice, Stiles thinks, to be invited. Good to know that he’s actually made some friends since being at this job. But he just smiles tiredly, shaking his head.

“Can’t. I’ve got plans with my girlfriend.” That’s not technically true, nothing specific anyways, but he hasn’t forgotten that they have bigger problems, depressingly, than one dead teenager. This day has been long, but his night will be more of the same, research, frustration, questions without answers.

Andy shrugs, getting to his feet.

“See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah,” Stiles gives him a weary nod as he pushes past the detective, toward the parking lot. “See you tomorrow.”

* * *

Stiles assumed he’d beat Lydia home, so when he pushes the apartment door open and is greeted by the smell of…something vaguely tomato-esque, he’s surprised.

“Lyds?” he calls out, freezing in the foyer when the nickname rolls automatically off his tongue. _Lyds_? Since when does he call her that?

She responds to it, apparently unfazed, her voice calling out from the kitchen. He follows it in, eyebrows going up at the scene that meets him.

“Um,” he says, scanning the various cans and empty packages laying like disaster wreckage across their granite countertop. “What’s going on here?”

She makes a face, brushing a stray curl of copper out of her face. The rest is tied back loosely, a few escaped wisps tickling her neck.

“I got home early, because seriously Stiles, my job is boring, and I thought I’d cook because it sounded like you had a bad day, but then I realized I don’t know _how_ to cook, so I figured how hard could spaghetti be, but-”

“Lydia!” He interrupts her, pointing to the stove. “That’s-somethings on fire-” he leaps for it, grabbing the lid to the pot and slamming it on over the flame, smothering it. The metal sears against his knuckles where they press into it, and he grits his teeth, but waits until the flickering light leaking through the seal where the rim meets the lid has faded before dropping the whole thing into the sink. Swearing, he shakes his hand out, already resigned to the fact that it’s going to be a decent burn.

The redhead stares at him for a moment, looking between his pained expression and the sink, eyes wide. After a few seconds she jerks suddenly back toward the stove, remembering, and turns the element off. Then she turns back to Stiles, approaching him tentatively.

“Are you okay?”

He forces a smile, tucking the hand behind his back.

“Yeah, I’m fine. This is uh-” He frowns at the chaotic mess of the kitchen, searching for an expression of gratitude that won’t come out sarcastic. “That was really nice of you.”

Her cheeks flame, and he knows how much she hates to be vulnerable, how much she hates to _fail_.

“None of it’s edible.” She says bluntly, eyes sweeping back up to meet his. There’s a familiar steel in her gaze, and she sets her chin. “I’m going to order Chinese.”

He stifles a laugh, but just nods.

“Yeah, okay.” But as she brushes past him, something broken and grieving inside him reaches out, his hand catching the back of her shirt. When she turns back to give him a questioning look, he pulls her into a hug, his fingers cupping the back of her head, other arm winding around her shoulders. She only hesitates for a second before wrapping her own arms around his waist, cheek pressing into his chest.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Her words are muffled into the material of his oxford, the feeling of her lips moving there distracting him a little.

“It was just-” He sighs. “A bad day. I missed you.” He expects her to stiffen at the declaration, to pull away like she usually does when he wears his heart on his sleeve like that, but instead she just squeezes a little tighter before letting him go.

“It was only a few hours.” But there’s no real bite behind her words, and Stiles wonders for a moment it maybe she felt it as well, that anchorless, floating feeling of being out in this alien world all by herself.

“I’m needy.” He shrugs, earning an amused smile. Then her face scrunches, eyebrows drawing together.

“Stiles…” Lydia takes a step back. “You reek.”

Stiles gapes at her for a second, then cranes his head to the side, sniffing. He can’t smell anything other than the lingering smoke from their earlier kitchen fire. He turns back to Lydia, confused, and she bites her lip.

“No, I just…I can smell the death on you. It smells like…” she wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know. Something sweet.”

“Oh.” He thinks of the girl earlier, the rope marks on her neck. _Something sweet,_ was that a clue? “Yeah I-” He almost tells Lydia about it, but stops himself. They have enough going on already. “I’ll go shower.”

Her expression changes, softens. It doesn’t take a homicide detective to figure out why death would be lingering around him after his first day back at the precinct.

“Do you-”

But he turns on his heel before she gets the question out, heading for the bedroom.

“Order some orange chicken for me.”

* * *

Lydia waits until they’re halfway through dinner to bring it up again.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Stiles frowns at her over the cartons scattered across the living room floor. Her legs are crossed, heels tucked under her thighs, and the haphazard bun she’d thrown her hair into earlier is starting to fall apart. She’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, the soft light of the lamp on the table almost making her glow.

And yet he’s supposed to be the angel.

“Not really.”

She shrugs easily at his response, conditioned to the dismissal by years of dating Jackson.

“I can’t believe I’m an actuary,” she grumbles after a minute has passed. “I’m supposed to be in research, doing something _important_. And instead I work for an insurance company.”

“Your takehome is twice my actual salary.” Stiles reminds her wryly. But she’s right. He’d always envisioned her as an award nominee, some kind of theoretical physics genius. Lydia Martin is many things, but he never would have imagined her to be a sellout.

She rolls her eyes at him, reaching out to snag the carton of vegetarian chow fun.

“Oh is that why you’re with me? For the money?” Her tone is light, easy, but he can’t help but take the bait.

“Please.” He snorts. “You could be broke and homeless and I’d still be more than lucky to end up with you.”

A pretty flush creeps up her neck, something Stiles can’t say he’s seen on her very often. Since Jackson she’s worn her beauty, her intelligence like a badge of armor, all that false modesty falling away.

“I read through the stuff Chris gave us again.” She’s changing the subject, but he lets her.

“And?”

“And…” She lets out a heavy sigh. “Not much, honestly. But there was this one part, hold on-” She scrambles to her feet, disappearing into the bedroom and returning with a handful of loose papers. She points to a specific passage, handing the page to him. “There.”

His eyes scan the text, taking in the usual unhelpful religious babbling, right up to the line she’d pointed at.

_The Traveler may find clarity, absolute control, upon release._

He looks back up at her, thoughtful.

“Release…release from what?” He rolls the word around his head. “And what’s a Traveler?”

“They use the term Traveler instead of Voyageur but it seems like they’re referring to the same thing. And I don’t know…” Her forehead wrinkles in concentration. “I thought maybe you’d have an idea about the release part.”

He doesn’t, not really.

“I’m kind of stumped,” he admits, though he hates to. She frowns in thought.

“Release…like prison? Or a curse, or….” She slumps, chin dropping to rest on her fist. “I don’t know. An orgasm?”

Stiles chokes on his bite of chicken gai ding. Coughing, he blinks up at her.

“Well, you come up with something then,” she says irritably when he catches her eye.

“No, no-” he clears his throat, grinning up at her. “Let’s explore your idea.”

“Prison?” She asks innocently. He throws a fortune cookie at her.

“I’m not sure about the clarity bit,” he mumbles after a few seconds of silence. “But having _absolute control_ would probably help with the whole getting-us-home thing.” Her agreement comes in a muffled hum, her mouth full of noodles. She swallows, then points her chopsticks at him.

“Does that mean you’re actually buying into the Voyageur idea? Because from what Chris said that’s a step in the right direction.”

His eyes fall to the floor, fingers curling in the soft fibers of the rug.

“I don’t know. It kind of feels like I have to.” Does he believe it though, really? Can he make himself believe enough to get them home?

As though the questions are mirrored in her mind, Lydia frowns at him.

“Stiles, if you don’t _really_ believe…”

“I’m trying,” he groans. “I am _trying_ , Lydia, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get you home but it’s just…it’s-impossible.”

Her expression softens.

“I tried,” she says softly. “Today, at work, I tried putting myself in your shoes. When I was trying to figure out what I was it felt impossible. And you were there and you kept insisting I was _something_ and it didn’t always sound like a compliment,” she adds. He opens his mouth, surprised. “Maybe…try not to think of it like the angels we grew up hearing about. That version of Angels and Heaven and God…it’s been sterilized. They weren’t perfect, they weren’t saints. They were just warriors, and honestly, it sounds like some of them were dicks.”

He makes a noise of indignance.

“Are you calling me-”

“I’m saying that if you would stop being so fixated on feeling like you’re not _good_ enough to be this thing you’re putting on a pedestal, maybe you’d actually be able to start looking at it like it’s possible.”

He blinks.

“Lydia, we’re not talking about a werewolf or a kanima or…like, if I were a monster, maybe I’d be able to believe it. That would make more sense. The-” His voice catches. “The nogitsune made sense.”

Her lips thin, something dark shifting behind her hazel eyes.

“Monster. Like a banshee?”

His mouth drops open.

“You know I don’t mean-”

“That’s the _point_ , Stiles! Before me, what would you have thought a banshee was?”

He sighs.

“I don’t know. Black hair, pale skin, terrifying.” He eyes her warily. “So, you know. Two out of three.”

She reaches out, smacking his bicep.

“Do you think I’m a monster?” She asks earnestly, and his chest constricts. He’s so unused to seeing her like this, pride aside, concern for him etched across her delicate features. It’s almost uncomfortably sincere.

“No,” he manages. “Of course not.”

“But I’m a banshee.” She presses. “And are they not monsters?”

“I-” he scrubs a hand across his face wearily. “I don’t know. I guess not.”

“And Scott, and Liam and Malia-”

“Alright, I get your point,” he cuts her off. “Would it be childish to say it just feels _different_ with the whole angel thing?”

“Yes,” she says immediately, though the corners of her lips tug upward. He sighs, gaze dropping to the plate in his hand. “And you should do this for _you_ Stiles. Don’t you want to know what you are?”

Appetite gone, he pushes his food away.

“I thought I knew what I was,” he mutters, making the mistake of meeting her eyes then. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, considering him. The meaning behind his words is obvious, and he’s sure the guilt and shame he’s been carrying around since Allison’s death is written all over his face.

He expects grief from her, too, as she remembers. And she does look sad, eyes big and dimples softening, but he has the strangest sense that she’s sad for _him_.

“So did I.” Her voice nearly breaks on the last word, and he finds himself reaching for her. She curls into him easily, shifting on the floor to sink into his chest. It feels like they’ve done this a million times before. It almost _hurts_ , the mocking way their bodies seem to fit together easily, remembering a life they haven’t had. It’s everything he ever wanted, and it’s not really there.

“I know what you are.” He says gently, and she sighs, cheek pressing against his neck, their knees knocking together as she moves closer to him. Without thinking, he pulls her into his lap, and then almost startles at his own boldness. Somehow Lydia doesn’t seem to notice, fingers curling softly in the fabric of his shirt.

“What am I, Stiles?”

He doesn’t know why, but the way she says his name, her warm weight resting on his thighs, it sends a shiver of lust through him. Trying to push it away, reminding himself that she needs comfort, not his hormones, he clears his throat.

“You’re Lydia. You’re a genius, and you’re way kinder than you’d like people to realize. You’re fiercely loyal, and braver than me, and you’re stubborn. You have no patience for ignorance, and you might be a banshee but it’s just a small part of who you are. You’re beautiful,” he adds, because he can’t help himself. “You’re going to change the world one day.”

Her nose is cold against his adam’s apple, and his breath catches in his throat.

“I want to go home, Stiles.”

He isn’t prepared for the way it sounds like a secret, like maybe she’s been keeping from him exactly how much she’s been missing their real lives.

To spare _his_ feelings _._

 _“_ Okay.” He rubs a hand across her back, guilt threatening to choke him, but motivating him anew. “Okay, Lydia, I’m going to get you home. I promise.”

He doesn’t say us. He’s not sure why. Later, he’ll wonder if part of him knew how it would end all along.


End file.
